Hot Poppies

by Reggie Nadelson

  I took a deep breath. “Is it Phil Frye?”

  “Not really,” she said. Lily walked across the room and leaned on a painted wooden dresser. The paint had worn thin. She was wearing a grey turtleneck and jeans. “This was Baby’s room when we were in high school. She was a few years older. She taught me how to smoke. I came here to escape. Sneak cigarettes. Iron our hair.”

  “You said you were going to China.”

  “No age requirements. Or marriage.” She grinned wryly. “Single women can adopt. All the babies are girls. I want a girl. I got lucky.”

  “Is it Pete Leung helping you?”

  “Yes, he helped me.”

  “How come Pete knows so much about it?”

  Lily turned to me. “I think he felt sorry for me. He has so much grief himself. He wants a child badly, and he’s trapped with a crazy wife. I don’t care how he helped me. He has contacts. He’s from Hong Kong. I don’t know and I don’t care. This is a totally selfish thing for me. I don’t claim to be rescuing an abandoned baby. I just want her, do you understand?” She was shaking.

  “Did you know Pete’s gone back?”

  “I think he said he was going. What difference does it make? All that matters is that he helped me. I nearly got one child a few months ago. It didn’t work out. Then you introduced me to Pete. A few days later, everything was arranged.”

  “I understand.”

  “Do you? Do you want to see her?”

  “Yes. Show me.”

  Lily sat down on the bed again and I sat next to her. I put my arm around her and she took a photograph from her bag and gave it to me. In it was a pretty Chinese baby girl with a rosebud mouth, pug nose, and chubby cheeks.

  “She’s kind of fat, isn’t she?” Lily laughed. “But she’s mine, Artie. She’s mine. Her name is Grace.” Lily rubbed her eyes. “It’s exactly like everyone tells you. The picture arrives. The letter says, ‘This is your baby.’ Half an hour later, I’m thinking: this is my baby. She’s mine.”

  Pete Leung had helped her and I was a jerk. All he did was help Lily get a child; all I could see was he was taking her away from me. In a way, I guess it was true. But not the way I thought.

  “Try to be happy for me.” Lily leaned back on the bed. She closed her eyes. For a few minutes we lay against the pillows together.

  “When do you go?”

  Lily got up. Tomorrow,” she said. “Do you think that’s all right, Artie? About Babe, about me leaving like that? I need you to tell me it’s OK.”

  “It’s OK. Of course it’s OK. Do you want me to come with you? To China. I could come. I have some money.”

  “That’s nice, Artie. That’s really nice. Thank you.” She kissed my cheek. “The arrangements are all fixed. It’s really nice, but it’s too late.”

  18

  “Christ. One of the lucky ones,” Jerry Chen said when we got to Al’s restaurant. “Jesus Christ.”

  In Al’s restaurant, where the tables were empty this time on a Sunday night, Pansy looked first at Chen, then, accusingly, at me, but I barely noticed the contempt in her eyes: the glasses, the red hat, the down vest were all gone; in their place was a different woman.

  In a black mini skirt and a cropped black sweater that left her midriff bare, she made her way slowly across the room. She wore high-heeled leather boots that reached up to her thighs. Her hair was loose on her shoulders and tendrils of it curled over her forehead. A thin red silk scarf was tied around her long neck. She was ravishing, all cheekbones and almond-shaped eyes and she knew how to walk, how to play to men, even a pair of assholes like Chen—she made it clear how much she loathed him—and me. She was a chameleon.

  Lifting her slender arm, she fingered the small silver cross on a chain around her neck, then gestured at Chen. “What’s he doing here?”

  From behind the counter, Al watched nervously, face dripping with sweat and worry.

  “It’s all right,” Pansy called to Al. “It’s all right.” To Chen she said, “What is it that you want?”

  “Tuesday morning,” he said. “The day after tomorrow. Nine a.m. I want you to come into my office. You’ve been there before. I want to take a statement from you. Then we can go to court.” Pansy stayed silent. “Do you understand?” Chen said.

  “She’s not deaf.”

  Chen moved closer to her so she was backed against the wall. “Your friend, Rose, is dead. You could be next.”

  Taking out his cigarettes, he offered them to her, and surprisingly, she took one. He lit it. Pansy was a glamorous smoker. She could have been in a bar with her legs crossed and a cocktail in one hand.

  Jerry switched into his seductive mode. He tried to beguile. “This is for you. I’m doing this for you and your friends, I’m tired of women dying.”

  The come-on didn’t work, of course. Pansy smoked and, in the kitchen, vegetables hissed in Al’s wok and a tap dripped. Soft and sweet as the best KGB man I ever saw, Chen did his act. Except the seduction didn’t work. Pansy wouldn’t talk.

  “It’s Pansy, is it?” he said, although he knew her name, of course. “Isn’t your name Pansy?”

  She stared at him. “You already know it’s what I call myself.”

  “You have another name. Don’t you?”

  “Not for you.”

  Quietly, Chen threatened her. “If you don’t want to play ball, then I’ll find a way to make you do it.”

  “What do you want?”

  “I told you. I want you to show up Tuesday. And I want you to look at some pictures.”

  Chen put a spread of mugshots on one of the tables. From the kitchen, Al watched. A clock ticked.

  “Please,” I said.

  Pansy shuffled the pictures quickly, picked one out, reached in her bag for her glasses and held it close to her face.

  “Him.” She tossed Wayne’s picture carelessly at the table. It fell on the floor. Pansy looked amused; it was what she wanted, Chen on his hands and knees for her. When he got up, I could see he wanted to slap her. Her self-possession and looks made it worse; she wasn’t even someone he could pity.

  “What happened to his eye?” she said.

  “Someone stuck a knife in his eye.”

  “Good. What did he do?”

  “We think he killed a woman. You’re sure it’s him? Even with the bandages?”

  “Even behind the ski mask?” I said it softly so Chen wouldn’t hear. “Pansy?”

  “Yes. He was there. In the room where they held us, Rose and me. I know I said the men wore masks. It doesn’t matter. I would never forget this man.” From a hook on the wall, she took a man’s tweed overcoat and put it over her shoulders. “I have to go. I have a job.”

  “We’ll go in my car,” I said.

  “A fucking Cadillac.” Chen was sardonic when he saw it at the curb. “Very nice, Art.”

  Pansy got in front beside me, leaving Chen to climb in the back. At Ludlow Street, she told me to stop and the three of us got out. Pansy crossed the street, picking her way over mounds of frozen filth. She glanced at the four-storey brownstone, then at me. “You’ve been in this building before.” Instinctively, she knew.

  “Yes. There’s a photo lab.”

  She started down the stairs. “They keep the shutters down during the day.” She tossed her head. “Not him. Send him away.”

  In the middle of the road, Chen hesitated. He had left the Porsche back at the restaurant. He would have to walk. Muscles twitched visibly in his face which was white and tight with unexpressed hate.

  “This is where Sherman, the man we called Mr Snap, took some of his dirty pictures.” We entered a vestibule with pink walls. “This is the whorehouse where I work. Have you been in this whorehouse?”

  “Not inside. I couldn’t find it.”

  “They shut down for a few days last week during the storm. Even whores had to stop work during the snow.” I didn’t believe her.

  In the vestibule was a desk. Behind it was a woman of about fifty. She w
as reading a paperback and barely looked up. Beyond her was a room with a couple of manicurist’s stations. It was only a front, but a couple of women sprawled behind the tables. Two men with bored faces and weapons barely concealed under their jackets played cards in the corner. The walls here were also pink. This was where the pictures we found in the lab upstairs had been taken.

  “Mr Snap, he came mostly during the day. I only work at night. I didn’t make the connection. I wanted you to know that.”

  Removing her coat, Pansy spoke briefly to the woman at the desk.

  “Have you got some money?”

  I took some twenties out of my wallet and held them out; Pansy took what she needed and handed it to the woman at the desk. “Come in back.”

  In a cubicle there was a bed and a chair and not much else.

  “The man in the picture that you showed me at Al’s before, I think he brought the lists to Mr Snap. I think he took away the photographs. The boss was somewhere else.”

  “You know the boss? Pansy?”

  Sitting on the bed, she crossed her legs. “I’m not sure.”

  “Can we go somewhere else? To talk?”

  “We are talking.”

  “What about them?” I nodded towards the front room.

  “Do you think the bad guys expect a whore like me and a guy like you to be talking here? In English?”

  The cubicle was warm and I took off my jacket. A gold box fell out of the pocket. Pansy bent to pick it up; she handed it to me.

  “It’s for you.”

  She ate the chocolate slowly this time, admired the Godiva box, thanked me, then looked at her watch.

  “I’ll pay for your time.”

  “I’m expensive,” she said and I tried to smile. “It’s not a joke. I am expensive. This is how I pay my debt. This is where I get the money to pay off my passage to America and the Golden Mountain. I can earn good money. Very good. It’s easier for me than for the village girls. They are modest girls when they arrive. Most have barely known any men, but if they’re lucky and they are pretty, they can work here. Or in a thousand others like it.”

  “Who are the men?”

  “Working men. Illegals also, many of them. On their way to work or going home.”

  “Condoms?” I asked.

  “No.” She looked at her watch again. “I have a job in a few minutes.”

  I got up and put my jacket back on, but Pansy took my hand. “I’ll testify if you want me to, Artie.” It was the first time she had used my name. “If you say so, I will.”

  “It’s up to you,” I said. Testify if you want. If you can. I’ll go with you. Why don’t we talk about it tomorrow? Until then I’ll keep Chen off your back.”

  “Tomorrow is Monday. I will be working tomorrow.”

  “Tomorrow night, if you want.”

  “Monday night I also work. Sewing. At the Joy Fun. Monday is a double shift. You can come there late if you like,” Pansy said. “Is there anything else you need me for now?”

  Chen was waiting. He must have picked up his car and come back in a hurry, because he was there and when he saw me he emerged from the Porsche, rushed at me and grabbed my arm hard.

  “What did she say?”

  “Nothing she didn’t tell you.” I pulled my arm away.

  “You’ll bring her to my office Tuesday.”

  “I’ll let you know.”

  “You’re making a mess of this, Art, you don’t fucking know what you’re doing.”

  There was a few inches of fresh snow on the street, but the second storm hadn’t amounted to much.

  “Just go away, Jerry, will you?”

  “What’s the matter with you, Art?” He opened the door of his car. “You think that I killed them all? You think that I’m Mr Big?”

  “Are you?” I said. “Are you? Well, maybe you are.”

  “Remember it’s not your case. It’s not your turf.”

  I looked at him. “Yes it is,” I said. “It’s where I live.”

  19

  The fire engines outside my window interrupted the Knicks game I was watching the next night. Lily had gone to China. I was home watching basketball, working on a beer. A local anchor came on the air. Pictures of Chinatown. A five-alarm fire. A building I knew. The building where Pansy worked at the Joy Fun Sewing Company. By the time I finished zipping up my jacket I was in my car.

  When I got to Market Street, the fire was already raging. It ate at the seven-storey building voraciously. From inside the building, flames curled and licked and fed on oxygen as they spat out of the windows and melted lumps of old snow on the ledges and the fire escapes. The dusk sky was black with the smoke and you could feel the heat even though it was freezing cold out. The noise—fire engines, police sirens, traffic on the bridge overhead—was obscured by the howling of the fire itself eating the building from inside.

  “Look!”

  I was at the back of a crowd of spectators and I craned my neck and looked up. Through the cover of black smoke, something fell to the ground. It was a young girl. She fell through the smoke, slid along the icy sidewalk like a fish in a factory chute, then cracked her skull on a fire hydrant.

  The crowd drew back.

  The whole street was barricaded. Blue and white police cars had begun to arrive. It was cold and wet. The red fire engines were parked everywhere, and I saw a couple of firemen heft coils of canvas hose that unraveled suddenly, slithering like snakes on the frozen street.

  Around me the air buzzed with the noise of controlled pandemonium, the cackle of talk, the wail of sirens, the cries of relatives, reporters, fire chiefs. A TV reporter was muttering about the Chinatown tenements. Built in 1900, she said. A fire trap. The City ignored it.

  More cops arrived. The EMS guys were attending to people who had managed to flee the building and were crouched on the curb, some with silver shock blankets around them, some bleeding. In increasing numbers, they were stretchered out or helped into ambulances. Another crew began unloading body bags from a truck.

  Across the street, against the ramparts of the bridge, the gate to the small park had been unlocked. Bodies were carried there in the bags. The black bags began to pile up. The mayor was there in the baseball jacket he wears to official tragedies; he walked around looking gloomy.

  “Monday I work a double shift,” Pansy had said. Monday. It was a Monday.

  From overhead came the noise of a helicopter. Its blades beat away some of the smoke.

  “My God.” A woman next to me in the crowd began to scream. Faces in the crowd were illuminated by the fire. “My God”, she said it over and over like a mantra until dozens of heads tilted back. And now the whole crowd, onlookers, relatives, cops, all looked up at the horror that was suddenly visible.

  In one window, five floors up, two young men smashed the glass. One pushed the other out and as he sailed downwards and died on the street, his friend jumped after him.

  On a ledge a floor above the boys, a woman held a child in her arms. You could see her clearly in the light from the flames, the way she held him, kissed him and then, blinded by trails of smoke, tossed him out. No one caught him. Even six storeys down from the fire, you could feel the sheer panic, hear the screaming. The fire had already spread to other floors. It spread to the top floor. To Pansy’s floor.

  Seven storeys up, on her floor, a fire escape was packed with people and it began to sway, sagging under their weight. The people on it, girls and women, held onto each other and screamed and seemed to be roasting alive. The flames from behind them were so bright the figures were in silhouette. The black sky was tinged with a reddish color, and on the surrounding buildings the snow melted in the heat and water ran everywhere in trickles, streams, gushes. The huge ladders seemed to drift almost aimlessly through the red and black sky, the firemen dangling from their rungs as they tried to reach the fire escape. Still holding his ladder, one fireman put his foot on the railing. He tested it. He pulled back. Then it swayed again and the women on it
appeared to freeze into a solid mass as the thing shuddered, the charred metal fell apart and the women—about a dozen of them—fell with it.

  As it went, two of the women clawed wildly at a ledge above them, holding on, like toys, firemen still out of reach, flailing around on the ladders. But the flames curled out of the window behind the ledge and burned their fingers. The women let go of the ledge. What was left of the fire escape simply snapped off like a rusty icicle.

  Where is she? I thought, but I already knew. I pushed against the crowd. The cops and medics forced me back, away from the sidewalk, away from the barricades. I saw Pansy’s friend, Al, and I tried to get to him but he didn’t see me.

  I lurched across the street and leaned against a mail box. I was hallucinating. In the chaos I had seen the boy with the orange quiff. But Wayne was in the hospital with a hole in his eye. What was he doing, prowling the streets? There was a payphone a few yards away.

  Stumbling, grit in my eyes from the smoke, I beeped Henry Liu because it was all I could think of, and I waited by the phone until he called me back.

  “He didn’t get out,” Henry said. “He’s still in the hospital.”

  “Then what’s he doing on the street?”

  Henry said, “Ever think of twins?”

  That was why Wayne had covered up for his pal; the other goon was his twin. The twin was still on the streets.

  Three hours later, the fire was out.

  “You want to go in with me, Artie?” said Sonny Lippert when the flames were out and the building flooded.

  “Put these on,” someone said.

  In a narrow alley that led to the back of the building, we climbed into the suits; I could smell the rubberized garments and through them, the smoke. A trail of ashes led the way, the smell of charred material seeped in under the hoods. Charred flesh. No one said anything.

  The fire chief went ahead of us, Sonny next to him, me behind. The stairs were burned out and we could only stare at the wreckage. There had been some workers in a machine shop. In it were twisted heaps of burned metal. On the floor were ashes, charred bone and a grinning skull. I’d seen pictures of the Gulf War, the skulls in the jeeps on the desert. Smiling skulls.