The Chinese Beverly Hills

by John Shannon

  A shadow filled the slot behind her, a voice purring, “We could shoot you now, rice girl. But we get you coming out.”

  She pushed and pushed but wasn’t even a quarter of the way through the slot. When the shadow behind disappeared and the taunts died away, she thought of reversing course. They’d never expect her to go back. The decision was helped along by gathering panic.

  It seemed harder heading back, but she thrust with all her might, pressing her hands against the stucco.

  “Dude, can you see her?”

  “It’s dark. Maybe she’s stuck.”

  “Let’s just shoot in there to make sure.”

  What on earth had got her trapped in this place, of all places? Following Comrade Sabby on her absurd crusade against these jackasses, of course. In the real universe, these jackasses didn’t even count as compost.

  She tried to calm herself by not thinking at all as she shoved herself along foot by foot. Then she tumbled out into cool air, gasping at what seemed a whole lot more oxygen. No pursuers were visible. She backed into shadows and then sprinted toward the electric gate as headlights approached.

  SIXTEEN

  Goods of Desire

  It was a Hong Kong–style restaurant on the roof of a Chinese mall. The linen-table ballroom was half a football field long and deafening with the persistent rain, plus Chinese families yakking and laughing.

  Jack Liffey and Walt Roski had been hit by a furious downpour just as they arrived between the curly-haired guard lions outside, clutching newspapers over their heads.

  “So many worlds,” Jack Liffey said at full volume as they were seated. “A few miles from here you can eat pupusas and hear nothing but Salvadoran Spanish.”

  “Sí,” Roski said gloomily. “What I notice is that these worlds don’t mix much at street level. When I visited New York, it was different. Those kids who jump onto the subways to break dance for money, they were always Black, Puerto Rican, and Italian, one of each.”

  “Maybe it’s cars that keep us apart.”

  “Maybe people just don’t like each other very much,” Roski said.

  It appeared that the owner himself was approaching to serve the only white guys. He offered a menu the size of the Guttenberg Bible.

  Roski ordered vegetables with elm and yellow fungus.

  “Vegetarian?” Jack Liffey asked.

  “My cardiologist told me it’s heads-up time.”

  The man bowed away. “You said something was up.”

  “Edgar Hoovers are in town in force. The handcuffs I found, you know. Kidnapping is an FBI matter.”

  Jack Liffey thought of the set of handcuffs he’d seen dangling from a woman’s ankle. He’d dropped poor, befuddled Megan Saxton at LAX earlier.

  “I’ve worked with the suits before, and sometimes it’s hard to believe they’re human beings. Black fabric, shiny shoes, grim faces. Fixed ideas and a mean cunning.”

  Jack Liffey sipped the dishwater tea. “Please explain.”

  Roski grimaced. “The Bureau’s decided that eco-terrorists set the Sheepshead Fire. That’s their flavor of the month. Earth First! It doesn’t matter that it doesn’t make a bit of sense. I tell them the fire killed a Lefty girl. They say maybe she was setting it. With handcuffs on? They wind them up in D.C. and plant an idea. The mouth just moves on and on.” He slapped his thumb against his fingers. “But the ears don’t work.”

  “Piquant,” Jack Liffey said. “You seem to be taking this personally.”

  Roski made a crumpled-up face like a fist in a sock puppet.

  “My wife used to watch Fox News all day, and buy these strange publications they push. I come home and want to unwind and she tells me somebody is flooding us with Masonic symbols on our cereal boxes. Jesus, the judge gave her the kids. They’re going to end up wearing tinfoil hats.”

  “I’m sorry, man.”

  “Oh, they’re smart kids—but what happens when they realize their mom is a flake?”

  The waiter brought their meals.

  “You want me to find out where your wife went?” Jack Liffey asked.

  “Would you do that for me?”

  “It’s what I do,” Jack Liffey said.

  “You know, this case is up to us now. Nobody else gives a damn. The girl was a Chinese radical, so fuck her.”

  *

  Paula Green saw the two men coming out between the curly-haired stone lions with the rain still battering hard. They paused at the edge of the canopy, shook hands, and spoke briefly. One was Jack Liffey. The other man she didn’t know. Hard to follow somebody by herself in a messy storm, but she figured she’d try anyway.

  The men went different directions and she had to choose. I must stand out like a unicorn in church, she thought. The large African American woman scurried across the roof in Chinese Beverly Hills.

  *

  Near the bar, two bearded guys about Jack Liffey’s age had just jumped to their feet from easy chairs. They wore pricey polo shirts and were so tipsy they messed up a complex ’Nam-era shake-tug-and-hammer. They followed that with shoulder bumps like football players in heat.

  Jack Liffey moved as far away as he could, carrying his Coke to the far side of the Tap Room of the Pasadena Langham, once the legendary Huntington Hotel. Tien had demanded he meet her here. Nobody else he knew could even afford the drinks.

  “Oh, I don’t know—your left!”

  The bearded guys began stationary marching.

  “But I been tol

  Eskimo puss

  Is mighty cold.

  Your left!”

  They seemed to run out of steam and settled again, and the worried-looking bartender relaxed.

  The scene dredged back a memory he’d as soon have stayed wherever it had been stuffed.

  Don’t… you… smile, Liffey! I’ll unscrew your head and shit down your neck!

  Drill Sergeant Harrison in basic. Fuck you sideways, Sergeant. Bullying is just bullying, and it’s not funny. Something was stirring up his psyche. Tien?

  He watched gas flames lick over ceramic logs. No, it wasn’t just Tien. For some time now he’d been avoiding something profoundly disheartening inside him. Maybe just drifting toward the final acts of his life, not sure he wanted to play out the remainder the way things had been going.

  Whoa. Tien strode in, glorious in a black silk slit-up-the-side ao dai. He’d never seen her wear one.

  One of the drunks stood up. “Boom-boom time! You make ficky-fick?”

  Jack Liffey got to his feet angrily, but Tien calmly presented the drunks her middle finger and strode past. Still, he continued toward them. She tried to stop him halfway, unsuccessfully. The honorable life required a little venom in the blood.

  “Incoming,” the sitting polo shirt declared.

  Jack Liffey arrived at their small coffee table with second thoughts about his rage. He’d almost driven his knee into the one who’d insulted Tien.

  “Stand down, pal,” Jack Liffey ordered.

  “A fucking new guy checks in!”

  “You can insult me all you want, but that was not acceptable.”

  The standee was so drunk he lost his balance and sat on his own. “Got it, the slope’s your wet spot. Didi mau.”

  Incountry, you’d only said fuck off to dogs or Vietnamese, and only if you were an asshole.

  The calmer one slapped the other backhand in the chest. “Sir, he doesn’t mean anything. He lost a friend yesterday. We were just boots, three-stripers. All is respect. What were you?”

  “Never mind what I was.” Jack Liffey walked back toward Tien, who had found his lonely Coke by the fireplace.

  “Oh, Jack, you so valiant. My honor very delicate. Those hombres just drunks. That not even got Alligator shirt. Bad copy.”

  He felt himself still breathing hard, and his chest ached with it. Indigestion? “What’re you doing here, Tien?” he asked.

  She lifted an eyebrow. “Business in Pasadena. Maybe I buy the city, maybe just half. This old hot
el mighty good place for tryst, huh?”

  He made a face.

  “I got President Suite. Teddy Roosevelt stay. Come see the view. Come play with me. I see you got tight windup tonight. Come relaxate.”

  “I don’t think it’s a good idea, Tien.”

  “It my idea. All my idea good idea. Time to celebrate.”

  “Celebrate what?”

  “Big strong Jack and weak Tien. Perfect team. Hey, I got nothing under this ao dai but me.”

  He never had figured out whether she’d been a top-of-the-line hooker in Saigon to buy her way out, as she’d once hinted. His imagination was feeling her body beneath the silk.

  “I know what you need.” She reached across him and discreetly tapped his erection through his slacks. “We go up in lift now. Whole world is easy.”

  *

  Ellen lay terrified on the metal floor of the windowless panel van that was hammering her hip. Her wrists were handcuffed behind her back, her ankles duct-taped together, and her mouth thoroughly muffled with duct tape that circled her head twice. The primeval feeling of helplessness pushed away any rational calculation. She’d started out trying to memorize the turns and straight stretches, from the spot on Baltimore Avenue where Beef had grabbed her, but her reckoning had quickly fallen apart.

  The van slammed to a stop and she slid forward so her shoulder rammed a seat. A gust of wet wind blew in as Beef stepped out. He hadn’t blindfolded her, but she couldn’t sit up to see a thing. All she heard was drumming rain on asphalt and the idling truck engine. Concentrate, girl. For all that white noise, the world was far too quiet—no traffic, no wind against houses.

  The van rocked a little and the door slammed. “Stay still. Fun later.” He drove onto a much rougher surface and got out again. A squeal of metal. Closing a gate, she thought. A fire trail! Oh no!

  “Stop squirming back there or I’ll come back and paddle your ba-dink-a-dink.”

  She would have to gather all her wits to survive this. Ellen shifted around to resist being thrown back and forth.

  The van slowed. “I said stop squirming. Am I making a mistake being kind to you?”

  She bleated through the gag, hoping it would seem compliance.

  After several more minutes of rough driving, he hit the brakes hard. “Fucking shit.”

  He sounded like a child balked. She heard a few thumps, maybe his hand pounding the steering wheel angrily.

  “Zook, you ain’t supposed to be here!”

  He was silent for a long time, then got out.

  “Sit and wait, girl.”

  She gave another mild bleat to appease the gods of the insane.

  “Don’t wander away.” He leaned over the seat quickly and snapped her picture with his cell phone. He followed this by emitting a very male braying. It was profoundly disturbing but was probably meant to be a laugh.

  *

  She sat on a pillow and waited. Why was she doing this? She had a perfectly satisfactory inner life, she had her painting--and she had at least a semester before UCLA and her dad caught on that she was AWOL from most of her studies.

  The swami’s assistant brought a bottle of Amstel. “Enjoy. Evolve.”

  “Have you evolved?” she asked.

  “It would be immodest to say.”

  “Does the swami like boys, too?” she asked.

  His smile collapsed and he fled. The swami entered from too far away for him to have heard her impertinence.

  “Are you comfortable? An ordinary Western chair can be brought. Minor things like that are insignificant.”

  “I’m a minor thing, too.”

  He made a palms-almost-together gesture of reverence, bowed slightly, and settled onto the floor. “Please relax. Open the direct passage from your ears to your core being.”

  *

  Tien Joubert hadn’t spent a lot of time showing him the view in the Presidential Suite.

  “Just like that, Jackie! Higher now. You the best, the best, the best!” She emitted that amazing cry, a small, wild animal, and then bucked hard against him, almost chipping his tooth. He ended up on the floor, rubbing a cramp in his shoulder.

  “Recharge battery now,” she said. “Not so long, though.”

  There was a tangle of bed linen off the cushy bigger-than-king bed. There was also a .38 snub-nosed revolver within her reach on the head table—a first for the Presidential Suite? Nothing, she’d said. Just protect from business that maybe go a little southern. Her meeting was with representatives of a Hong Kong triad, he’d discovered. Jesus Christ.

  But he’d been hibernating a long time deep in an emotional cave, and she sure could pep him up.

  *

  Paula Green ordered another diet Coke and sat back down in the isolated chair in the Tap Room. The ritzy place was jumping. She’d been hit on by two white-shoes hopefuls and sent them packing, and she’d had to badge a hard-eyed ex-cop from Long Beach who was part of the hotel’s “security matrix,” as he’d put it. It might even be flattering that they’d all assumed she was a trolling hooker.

  She conned the desk into telling her that Jack had gone up to the Presidential Suite with a very rich Asian woman. Everyone refused to reveal the name, but Paula would find it out before she left.

  It was possible Jack had taken Gloria literally about a fling, but Paula gave him the benefit of the doubt. He might be on the job here.

  The Tap Room was filling up with affluent-looking couples, dressed down for an L.A. evening with their carefully laundered, torn-knee jeans, rock-n-roll tour t-shirts, and Prada tennis shoes. Bring it on, white folks. Me and mine dress up for real on weekends and dance to jazz and blues.

  *

  “Zook, man. We missed you.”

  “What you doing at the cabin, Beef ?” Zook said.

  The big man stood blinking in the blast of hot air coming out the door.

  “Jeez, man. I thought we shared. All for one and all on one. I need the cabin for a date.”

  “Last time you had a date, you were waving your kielbasa at a room full of college girls.”

  “Don’t be mean, Z. I got my date with me.”

  “I ain’t going to no motel tonight.”

  “Zooker! I need the place.”

  “Good for you. This is my family’s cabin. I need it for me. Ah, shit—you really got to show it off for some cooze, take her in the back and close the door.”

  “Thanks, Zookiesticks. You’re my hero.” Beef hurried back toward his van.

  A thinking man looked out for the ones who were a few marbles short, Zook thought. But his refuge had been wrecked for the night. He settled back in his swing chair and set aside the book Jack Liffey had given him, still fighting with the section on women. He wondered what sort of date Anthony Buffano could muster up.

  Who would want Beef? Honestly. Zook was expecting a gap-toothed old skank who’d make him want to wipe down every surface she’d touched. But the date Beef carried into the cabin under one arm was a terrified young Asian with short blue hair, gagged with duct tape and handcuffed.

  “Fuckin’ A!” Ed Zukovich leapt to his feet as Beef slammed the door. The big man was also dangling a persuasive-looking .357 revolver. “What the fuck are you doing?” Zook said.

  “Mind your own beeze. And stay out of my grill tonight. You can have a turn later, you want.”

  “Not in this life, man. That ain’t no date. You don’t handcuff a date.”

  The girl squealed urgently.

  “It’s part of the game. Don’t be no slope-lover, dawg. I gotta do what I gotta do here. This the bitch been following me around wantin’ it.”

  Zukovich knew he couldn’t face Beef down, not when the guy had his hormones up. Just hit the road in the Studebaker now, Zook, and don’t come back no more no more. The big guy had always been damaged goods. They’d known it all the way back to Macy Intermediate, when they’d saved him time and again from his worst self—flashing the little girls, torturing pets.

  An inner voice
reminded him: You’re a serious man, Ed Z. If you walk away from a defenseless girl, you’re on the way to becoming an expendable fart on this planet. The serious man has to stand up.

  “Girl, just hold on,” Zook said softly, with more authority than he felt. “It ain’t gonna be.” This is maybe the fight you got to ride until the wheels fall off, he thought.

  Beef kept moving the pistol in small increments, staring at it blankly then at other things in the room, no particular target in mind as far as Zook could determine.

  *

  Tien snored loudly, aflop beside him. He was pleased to have worn her out, but he had very little energy reserve himself. There was a burning in his chest under the sternum and Jack Liffey lay very still willing it to subside. Probably the French onion soup.

  He rolled to his side and looked out the curtainless window. The rain was on pause, and southeast a million crystal-sharp points of light stretched away for miles. Pinholes through the skin of the city to the white-hot reality underneath.

  Tien’s sleep t-shirt hung over a chair. A monogram said G.O.D. He’d asked about it, expecting a religious joke, but then wished he hadn’t asked. Goods-of-Desire—an import company she owned, but really it was Hong Kong slang for the massive Chinese industry of counterfeiting Western luxury goods. Corrupt army officers ran the plants, but the triads ran the export. Tien hoped to be their outlet for much of North America.

  She’d told him she wanted to become the world’s first Vietnamese billionaire. But if she put her foot wrong, she might end up a cardboard box of truculent ashes.

  *

  The swami’s mesmerizing voice was well into his spiel and Maeve followed his instructions—closing her eyes, letting her mind drift.

  “The reconstruction of memory happens faster than thought, faster than reality formed the memory.”

  Maeve’s mind drifted away to worry about Gloria and her dad. You could only stay focused so long.