by G. M. Ford
Having failed so miserably at stealth, I decided to try the direct approach this time. The receptionist was a good-looking blonde woman with thin black eyebrows. About thirty, she wore a tight yellow blouse and black stretch pants. Behind her desk, the large open office area had been divided into about twenty cubicles. The maze hummed with activity. Voices chattered away in several languages.
"Can I help you, sir?" she asked.
"I'd like to see Judy Chen," I said.
She folded her arms across her ample chest and narrowed her eyes. Her facial expression suggested that I'd just asked if I could use her underwear to make soup.
"Whatever you're selling ..." she began.
I pulled a business card from my pocket and handed it over. She read it carefully and then checked the back side.
"You're the guy ..." She looked up. "Down at the warehouse."
"Yup," I said. "I'm the one."
She checked both sides of the card again, and then motioned toward the three folding chairs along the front wall.
"If you'll have a seat for a moment, I'll see if I can't find someone to help you."
She stepped out from behind the desk, walked down the hall to a door marked PRIVATE and knocked tentatively. Someone must have answered, because she stuck her head inside for a moment and then stepped back against the wall. She motioned me forward.
As soon as I stepped into the room, he got languidly to his feet. Must have been my week for tall Chinese guys. He was about six-three and thin. A little bit long on hair and short on chin. About a hundred eighty pounds in an immaculate blue silk suit and one of those collarless, nineties Nehru shirts, he held my card gingerly, at the edges, as one holds a squashed bug.
He didn't waste any time on introductions.
"Does this concern the incident at our warehouse the other night?" he asked. "Our attorneys assure us . . ."
I stack out my hand. "Leo Waterman," I said.
He didn't even look at it, much less shake it. He kept flicking his black gravel eyes from the card to my face and back.
Unbidden, I took a seat in the red leather visitor's chair and tried to look comfortable. He stared at me for a long moment and then, with dramatized reluctance, seated himself behind his desk.
"I'm looking for Judy Chen," I said.
He cocked an eyebrow at me. "So you said."
"I'll say it again if you like."
He kept his face as still as stone.
"My mother no longer takes an active part in the business."
"This isn't business. It's personal."
"You are acquainted with my mother?"
"No," I said, "but my father was."
A subtle tightening around his jawline told me he knew exactly what I was talking about. So much for inscrutability.
"My mother does not see visitors."
"She'll see me."
He sat back in the chair, rested his elbows on the padded arms and steepled his fingers in front of him.
"What business do you have with my mother?"
"I told you. It's personal."
He turned his hands palms up.
"And I told you; my mother does not see visitors."
"Well then, feel free to think of me as an old family friend, rather than as a visitor."
He made a weak attempt at a smile. "Well then . . . as you're an old friend ..." The smile got bigger. "... perhaps you will do me the honor of allowing me to assist you."
I made like I was thinking it over. "Okay ..." I began. I tapped my temple. "Excuse me, but I can't for the life of me recall your name."
He went back to his Mr. Stone Face.
"Gordon Chen," he said after a moment.
"Okay then, since we're old friends, Gordo, howsabout you tell me what you know about a guy with no ears who was camped out down at your warehouse on Pier Eighteen."
He emitted a short dry laugh. "A little guy in pajamas, right? A little pigtail? Was he carrying a little hatchet?" He cut the air several times with the side of his hand. "Chop, chop."
"No pajamas. Actually, he was about your height, and it was a rubber mallet." I smiled. "He did have long hair, though."
He leaned out over the desk and gave me a conspiratorial leer.
"What really happened? You get drunk and drive in the river? Is that it? You don't want the little woman to know, so you're making up this cock-and-bull story about a man with no ears?"
I snapped my fingers. "You see right through me," I said. "Have you always been this insightful?"
He sat back and took a deep breath. We had a pin-drop moment.
"For reasons I fail to understand, you suddenly keep popping up in my life, Mr. Waterman. It is my sincerest hope that this disturbing trend can be brought to an immediate end."
He paused. I favored him with a shrug.
"So . . ." He wagged a long finger at me. ". . . just for the record, I'm going to tell you the same thing I told the authorities. No such person is, or ever has been, associated with this business." He fixed me with a stare. "Am I making myself clear here? Is there any part of that statement which you did not understand?"
He wasn't expecting an answer, so I didn't give him one.
He rocked back in the chair. "You know, Mr. Waterman, if you don't mind me saying . . ."
"And even if I do," I interrupted.
He smiled. "As you wish, " he said. "Considering all that's going on with your father and all of that, I should mink you would have better things to do than make up tall tales about men with missing ears."
"What would you be doing?"
For the first time, I had him going.
"What?" he said.
"If it were your father who was in all the papers, what would you be doing?"
I was hoping that maybe I could get him talking. Hoping if I lightened up the banter, maybe he'd relax a bit. No such luck. The words were hardly out of my mouth when his brow furrowed and his face began to flush. I watched as his fingers dug into the padded armrests of his chair. Now I knew what it looked like to a dentist who accidentally drills into a nerve. Without being exactly sure how I'd managed it, I really had the guy going. Interesting.
I opened my mouth to speak, but it was too late. Suddenly, he jumped to his feet and leaned out over the desk at me.
"Perhaps you have time to waste, Mr. Waterman, but unfortunately, I do not. I have a business to run." He gestured toward the door. "If you don't mind, I have a great deal to do."
I stayed put. "I don't mind a bit."
"Get out," he said. "Or should I call the police?"
"That's not very hospitable to an old friend."
"Get out," he repeated.
"Listen, Junior," I said. "I'm going to see your mother whether you like it or not. Today . . . tomorrow. I'm not sure exactly when. But I'm going to see her."
He came around the desk fast and stood looming over me. I checked myself for hangnails and then smiled up at him.
"Nice suit," I said.
He thought about reaching down and hauling me from the chair, but sanity prevailed. I outweighed him by fifty pounds. He was seriously pissed off, but he wasn't that stupid. Instead, he turned and leaned low over the desk phone. He pushed the red button.
"Darlene . . . call the police."
I got to my feet and stood nose-to-nose with him.
"You know, Junior," I said, "a suspicious man could get the impression you've got something to hide."
He clapped me on the shoulder. On his wrist, he wore a thin stainless steel watch with a mesh band. "Of course I do." He winked. "We all do. Opium dens. Illegal mah-jong parlors. Dog farms. The mysterious secrets of the Orient and all that."
His hand remained on my shoulder.
I shook a finger at him. "You know, with all this racial stuff, you're starting to sound like a bigot. If I were you, I'd watch that. These are very politically correct times."
He dug in hard with his fingers and tried to turn me toward the door. I stayed put and then reached up
and gently removed his hand. He tried to pull away, but I held his wrist. The guy was vibrating like a tuning fork. I had this sudden vision of Arte Johnson doing the Nazi on Laugh-In. Veeeery interesting.
I kept my smile in place and my voice level.
"And if you touch me again, Sparky, you're going to have to learn to wipe your ass left-handed," I said.
I let go of his wrist; his hand fell to his side, with a slap.
He stared at me for a long moment, walked over to the door and pulled it wide.
Darlene held the phone pressed to her ear. Her pencil-thin eyebrows rode high on her forehead like dueling question marks.
"They put me on hold, Mr. Chen," she said.
I stepped around him and started quickly down the aisle toward Darlene. Her eyes were wide; her mouth formed a bright red circle.
"Don't bother," I said on the way by. "I'll be going now."
I pulled open the door and stepped out into the street. To the West, the Kingdome squatted like a concrete toadstool. I gave myself a mental boot in the ass for letting him piss me off. It not only was unprofessional, but I'd accomplished nothing. I didn't know any more about Fortune Enterprises or Judy Chen than I had this morning.
I was still beating myself up as I walked back past the loading docks to the Fiat, got in and turned the key. Nothing. Not a sound. Tried it again. Still nothing. I pulled the hood release and got back out of the car. I released the latch, propped the hood open and stuck my head down into the engine cavity. I checked the wire connections to the distributor coil and spark plugs. Everything was tight. I checked the battery terminals for a loose connection. Nothing.
I heaved a sigh and began to close the hood. Then I saw him. Young Mr. Chen had donned a gray wool topcoat and had apparently developed a sudden urge for a stroll on a blustery fall afternoon. I stepped back behind the upraised hood and then peeked out around the passenger side. He looked neither to the left nor the right as he strode purposely up South Lane Street, the wind twirling his hair and rustling the tails of his coat.
I let him get a half a block up the street and then eased the hood down, locked the car and started after him. I stayed on the opposite side of the street, easing in and out of doorways and slipping behind parked cars, until three blocks later, right as he got to the Sun Ya Restaurant, he angled across the street to my side and disappeared around the comer of Seventh Avenue South.
I sprinted up the sidewalk and poked my head around the corner just in time to see him pull a key from his pants pocket, thrust it out before him and then step from view.
I counted ten and then started up the street, keeping close to the building, easing past a travel agent and a Chinese herb store, until I came to an unmarked blue steel door. A small surveillance camera was mounted high over the hinges, allowing a full view of anyone in the doorway. I averted my face and backed up a half dozen steps.
I crossed the street, over to what used to be the old Shanghai Hotel, and then turned back and looked at the building. I'd walked by it a thousand times but had never really seen it. Built of blood-red brick, its three-story edifice occupied the entire center of the block. While the ground floor was commercial, the upper two stories apparently were not.
A pagoda-roofed portico both separated the ground-floor businesses from whatever was above and also provided the necessary support for the second-floor balcony which ran the length of the building. Three sets of heavily curtained French doors were spaced along the wall.
What caught my eye, however, was the roof. From this angle, I could see that the roof had been converted into a garden of some sort. I could make out the dry stalks of tall plants and the top of a trellis or an arbour.
I recrossed Seventh Avenue South and ensconced myself in the doorway of the Sea Garden, my favorite Chinese restaurant. I was two-thirds of a block from where Gordon Chen had entered. If he went back the way he'd come, I was golden. If he came this way, I'd step into the restaurant. Maybe have some Singapore noodles or prawns in black bean sauce. It could be worse.
I spent the next twenty-three minutes as an unofficial doorman, opening the door for arriving customers, waving bye-bye to babies, smiling and nodding, trying to seem inconspicuous. At eleven-ten, Gordon Chen stepped out onto the sidewalk, cast his eyes quickly up and down the street, and went striding back toward the office. I waited until he was out of sight and then sauntered down to the doorway.
The door was dark green and solid steel. Nothing short of a blowtorch and a sledgehammer was going to so much as make a dent. A small white button was mounted directly into the brick. The second I pushed it, the surveillance camera began to pan slowly across the area, its electronic eye adjusting to focus, its electric motor whirling in the cold air. The voice came from a small grated speaker mounted high up over the door.
"Jes."
"I'd like to see Judy Chen, please," I said. The electronic voice was female and Hispanic. "Mees Chen does no receive visitors." "Please tell her Leo Waterman would like to speak to her."
She didn't say yes or no. The speaker rattled once, and she was gone. I leaned back against the south side of the entranceway and waited, trying to give the impression that I was either confident of my chances or prepared to wait for as long as it took. It took about five minutes.
When I heard the handle being turned from the inside, I stepped out into the street, figuring that anybody who guarded their privacy this zealously just might have a leg-breaker on retainer. The door opened to reveal a woman in a gray maid's uniform. She was about fifty, short and stout, with a thick head of wiry salt and pepper hair held in place by a white plastic headband. She dried her hands on her white apron. I felt pretty certain I could whip her, so I stepped back up to the door.
"Jew come wid me, please," she said.
When the door swung wide, I realized she was standing in a narrow elevator car. I stepped in next to her. The sole adornment to the interior was a current elevator inspection certificate screwed to the back wall. She pushed the uppermost button, and we began to move silently upward. As we ascended, the maid looked me up and down several times, as if my presence had some sort of miraculous quality.
The door slid back. We were on the roof. The maid held her finger on the DOOR OPEN button, but did not move. She looked up at me with big liquid brown eyes. "Mees Chen see jew here. Jew go."
I stepped out of the car and began to look around. The scene before my eyes was something out of space and time, as if some remnant of an earlier age had been transported intact to the present and plopped down on top of the building. The entire roof of the building had been transformed into a formal garden, complete with hedges and flagstone paths. The breeze carried the sound of running water to my ears. Behind me, the door slid shut and I could hear the grinding sound of the elevator mechanism as it descended.
From my present vantage, I could see that the building ran completely across the block to the west, providing what I imagined to be the better part of half an acre of roof garden. Either the bunding had been built to withstand an incredible amount of weight on the roof, or somebody had put one hell of a lot of money into a structural remodel.
Along three sides of the roof, stands of tall bamboo swayed and rustled in the breeze. A central path of irregular flagstone ran toward an ornate wooden gazebo which seemed to mark the center of the space. On either side of the path, flower beds had been raked clean for the winter and covered with black plastic. To my right, twisted grapevines covered a redwood arbor with leathery yellow leaves.
On my right, next to the elevator, two pair of rubber boots rested on a bamboo mat. One pair small, almost childlike. The other pair big enough for me. It was like I'd figured; old Gordo lived with his mama.
She was down at the far end on the right, on her knees, digging. I walked down the path and around the gazebo until I was about eight feet from her and stopped. Her hands said she was about seventy, her hair gone silver beneath a Mariners baseball cap. She wore blue jeans and a gray Husky sweatshir
t. She used her thumbs to separate bulbs. I stood quietly as she wiped the last of the dirt from the bulbs in her hand and then got to her feet. She used the wrist of her empty hand to wipe the hair from her face and then took me in from head to toe with a level gaze.
"You favor your father," she said.
"So I'm told."
She was still beautiful. Like the pictures I remembered from the newspaper. Her almond-shaped eyes were clear and her skin nearly flawless. Her mouth was small and tight, like the bud of a miniature rose. Only her hands and the lines around her eyes suggested age.
She motioned for me to follow as she moved down the path to the right, toward a brown basket which rested on the flagstones down by the south edge of the roof. We walked side by side. She moved with the lithe grace of a young girl.
"I presume you've seen the papers," I began.
"I haven't read a newspaper or watched the news in nearly ten years," she said. "Not since I retired."
I told her the story. The strange saga of Peerless Price. Five hundred words or less. She never even blinked.
"You can imagine what they're saying about my father."
She stopped walking and looked up at me.
"He wouldn't mind,'' she said flatly. "You're sure?" I asked. "I'm certain," she said without hesitation. She began walking again. As I hustled to catch up, I had the feeling she was right. "I mind," I said.
She stooped low over the basket and dropped the handful of bulbs in with several dozen others. I stood still and listened as the wind rattled the dry bamboo. In the distance, a car alarm began to chirp like an urban cricket She straightened back up, dusting her hands together.
"Is that what you were doing down at my warehouse? Protecting your father's honor?"
"I thought you didn't read the paper."
"Gordon told me of your unfortunate experience. Is it? Is that what you were doing?"