by Max Lockhart
Fontana grabbed his arm. "You're reading more into this than there is. You're fighting old battles."
Cleary slid off the car. "I'm not fighting old battles. I never fought the last time." He opened the Caddy's door and slipped in. "It was good to see you, Charlie."
Fontana leaned in the open window. "You can't change something that happened five years ago. This Chinatown arrangement goes back aways, Jack."
"You mean the arrangement between the cops and the tong?" interrupted Cleary, feeling rage tighten his muscles.
Fontana's face went rigid. "It's not exactly what you think, Jack. It never was. Sure, sometimes we close an eye to the tong's gambling dens and some of their other activities because they're the only law in Chinatown. The cops are here on sufferance, and because the tong finds it easier to accommodate us than fight us. Sure, we could take over from them, but we'd have to wade knee-deep in blood and bodies to do it. Without the tong, this whole section will explode. But we don't let them get away with murder."
"Don't you?" asked Cleary, catching the faintest scent of jasmine on the evening air.
"Damn it, Jack, if you ever accuse me of anything like that again, I'll knock your stubborn head right off your shoulders." Fontana expelled a deep breath. "We don't know who killed that girl five years ago. While you were eating guilt for breakfast, lunch, and dinner, I looked into it. There was nothing. If I had found some smell that it was a tong killing, I would've done something. What, I don't know. You know how it is."
"Yeah. That's why I transferred out of Chinatown. I couldn't stand facing it every day."
"Facing the tong, or facing your guilt?" asked Fontana. "Watch it. The 'arrangement' or your guilt might swallow you up."
"Let it!" said Cleary, and peeled away from the curb and deeper into Chinatown.
NINETEEN
Johnny cruised up to the curb in his '49 Merc: collar up, elbow out, and feeling totally cool. Sliding out from behind the wheel, he leaned against his hood and faced the Chinese gang kids on their own corner, and claimed a piece of it. A portable radio played Jerry Lee Lewis's "Breathless" at an ear-splitting decibel level, and chicks in skin-tight capri pants, guys in Chinese versions of Elvis haircuts, hung around a '54 chopped De Soto. Of course the Chinese gang flew their green-and-yellow-satin colors instead of white T-shirts and black leather, but that was okay. Variety was the spice of life, or something like that. And everybody had black hair and eyes, but Johnny figured his were just as black. His eyes didn't squint at the corners, and his skin wasn't the color of yellowed piano keys, but what the hell. "Live and let live was his motto.
He lit a match with his thumbnail, fired up a Lucky, and smiled at the expressions of shock on the kids' faces. He shrugged and took a drag on his cigarette. Facing a gang just depended on having guts, and he had never had any complaints in that department.
A scrawny kid with a neck like a turkey nudged the gang leader. "That's the hillbilly that almost skinned our wheels."
"Oh, yeah?" said the leader, a taller, more muscular kid with the premature lines of leadership etched in his face. He turned to Johnny and played it cool. Where you want the body sent, man?"
Johnny touched his thumb to his chest. "You talking to me?"
The gang leader took a step closer. "Nobody comes down here on our turf. 'Specially no paddy-faced, redneck white boy."
Waving a finger in mock reproach, Johnny dug back in his memory of infrequent school attendance for the right stiff-assed, disapproving teacher to imitate, and decided on Miss Clements, an old maid history teacher. "Now, now, let's not judge a person by the color of his skin. It is not Christian." He dropped back to his own voice. "So-any of you Chinks know a guy by the name of Tommy Ling?"
Johnny decided that in a contest for the tensest moment of silence, the one following his question had to win the grand prize. The gang stood with their lower lips dragging in the gutter from surprise. Obviously nobody expected the question, or knew how to react to it. Except the leader, who with a snap-click, suddenly held a six-inch switchblade in his hand.
Johnny braced himself. Switchblades. How common. "I came down to help the guy, but if you want to get into it..." He opened his coat with a sigh of resignation, and revealed the sawed-off shotgun. "Let's go. I'm ready."
The gang leader was smart enough to know a guy doesn't take a knife to a gunfight, so he stood there studying Johnny. Which was okay by Johnny. He didn't mind as long as the kid came up with the right answer.
"You're crazy, man," the leader finally said. "What makes you think you're getting out of here alive?"
Johnny patted his twelve gauge, "Well, aside from my diplomatic attache here"—eyes still on the leader, he reached in his car and cranked up his radio, which also blasted out "Breathless"—"we're running on the same dang octane, ain't we?"
Johnny could see that the gang leader was fighting hard, but finally, in spite of himself, he cracked a half smile. All the others followed suit, and the tension evaporated like water spilled on a hot sidewalk. Cautiously Johnny let out his breath. He was glad that was over because he wasn't sure he could've gotten out without ventilating several of the kids. He didn't like the sight of blood; he really didn't.
The gang leader put away his switchblade and shrugged. "No one can help Tommy. He's gonna have to do the time."
"Just why the hell should he do that? He didn't do it."
The same scrawny kid that had alerted the leader to Johnny's presence in the first place spoke up. "Why don't you tell us something we don't already know, man?"
A second kid piped in, "Yeah, like where the guys are from that are pulling off these jobs, man."
The leader shot them a quick look, shutting them up with promises of busted bones if they didn't, but they had already said too much. Johnny considered this new bit of information for a minute, then attempted to keep the conversation alive. Hell, no telling what else turkey-neck might come up with. ''Where I come from, guys stand up for each other. We don't let somebody walk up and tell us one of our buddies is going down to the joint, and for us to keep our mouths shut and let it happen. That's a piss-poor stand for a bunch of kids who think they're tough to take."
Several of the gang members bristled at that dig. "Hey, man," said turkey-neck. "You don't know the kind of shit that goes on down here."
"Yeah?" replied Johnny. "You know something? I don't want to know either. It'd just be a bunch of excuses so you won't feel bad when some con in the joint guts Tommy 'cause he don't like Chinks, or just because he had a bellyache that morning."
The leader's eyes narrowed into slits, and he took a menacing step toward Johnny just as a conservative black sedan cruised slowly by. Johnny didn't know who the thin, young man at the wheel was, but he would bet his last dollar that skinny, dried-up man sitting in the backseat who looked as old as God was Uncle Lu. The old man glanced out the window, and seeing Johnny talking to the gang members, leaned over and tapped the driver on the shoulder. The young guy threw a startled look at Johnny, and pulled up to the opposite curb and parked.
Johnny looked around at the gang members and decided he had never seen so many kids whose faces looked like they had just found a cockroach in their egg roll, and decided to pour forty gallons of water down the cook's throat.
Scrawny turkey-neck spoke up again. Evidently he had chronic diarrhea of the mouth, thought Johnny. "We won't have to take this shit for long, man."
"Shut up!" said the leader, renewing his bone-busting promise with his look. He turned to Johnny, his face solemn. "You don't know anything, man." He paused for a measure or two. "If you want to help him, stay out of it."
The gang began to wander off down the street under the watery gaze of Uncle Lu. The leader glanced back, but Johnny couldn't begin to decipher his expression, other than to decide the guy was on simmer, but that it wouldn't take much more heat to bring him to a boil. Johnny wondered how much longer an old geezer like Uncle Lu was going to be able to keep the lid on Chinatown.
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The conversation in Chinese between Uncle Lu and the other tong members was subdued, but then Cleary expected that. Certainly Uncle Lu hadn't raised his voice in anger within the living memory of anyone in Chinatown; however, Uncle Lu hadn't needed to. When someone's been as powerful for as long as Uncle Lu, he develops what Betts would call cool. On the other hand, the tong overlord was being challenged for the first time in more years than Cleary was old. Surely that ought to raise the old man's blood pressure at least a little. Unless Uncle Lu thought he had the situation under control by throwing San-Tsiang to the wolves.
He adjusted a dial on his receiver to edit out an occasional squeal from the mike hidden across the street in the herb shop, lifted his headphones a little to ease the pressure on his earlobes, and glanced out the window at the dragon's head of gaudy, flashing neon light on a bar next to the herb shop. He lit a cigarette and let the droning conversation and the impenetrable Chinatown night wash over him. He hated stakeouts. They were always long, boring, and in seedy hotels like this one; the bathrooms were always down the hall and dirty.
He glanced out the window at the mysterious, complex river of faces, silhouettes, storefront gestures, and shadowy transactions, all bathed in the timeless neon glow of Chinatown at night. Between the chatter of singsong Chinese in his ears, and the hypnotic tableau below, his mind drifted back...
... to another restless night when he sat at a table in the back of Frank Tang's bar with Sfakis, Hine, Fontana, and Dibble. The others were relaxed, drinking free booze and bullshitting, at ease with Chinatown, satisfied with the status quo. He was the one who was fighting a sense of loneliness. He watched the cigarette smoke spiral up from the table to add another layer to the already gray-blue haze that swirled lazily, endlessly, toward the ceiling. Frank Tang appeared out of the smoke to deliver another round of drinks on a tray. He passed out the usual to each man, his face a bland, placid mask. With a special flourish, he ran the sliver of lemon peel around the rim of the glass before presenting Cleary with his bourbon and water.
"Thanks, Frank," Cleary said, saluting the Chinese with his glass.
Frank's mask slipped into a half smile. "Always my pleasure, Detective."
No one else at the table even glanced at Tang, and Cleary felt his alienation increase. It was as though he were the only cop who accepted the Chinese as being human. He felt sometimes as though he was suspended between two worlds, his own and that of Chinatown, just as surely as the cigarette smoke hung suspended in midair. But eventually, even the smoke drifted up and dissipated. Only he was in limbo. He pulled his chair closer to the table to listen to the conversation and to feel a part of his world.
"You're way over the line on this one, Cleary," said Dibble.
Cleary took a sip to give himself time to think himself back into the conversation. "If she can't get help from the cops, what are we doing down here?"
Sfakis took a gulp of his drink and sat the glass down with a thud. "We don't want the whole thing to unravel because of one ditzy Chink hooker who thinks she saw something she shouldn't have. Chances are she didn't see a goddamn thing to start with. She just wants to stir things up."
Cleary shook his head. "Not a Chinese woman. They know their place."
"Maybe she's forgotten," said Hine. "The point is, she's a troublemaker. If we start fooling with this arrangement, the whole thing could come down on us."
Cleary stirred uneasily. He tried not to think of the arrangement, tried to bury his objections in a mass of good reasons why the cops and the tong should work together. "She's a kid who's been through the wringer, and she's scared," he protested.
Dibble looked across the table at him. "You're either on the team or you're not, Cleary. We can't have any one-man grandstanding."
Heads turned toward him, and he felt almost pinned to his chair. This was how a suspect felt getting the third degree.
"You're one of us, Cleary," said Hine, extending a welcome back into their world.
Fontana interrupted, frown lines slashing between his eyes. "Wait a minute," he said. "Don't get the wrong idea, Jack. It's your choice whether or not to pursue this thing. You gotta follow your instincts." Cleary looked around the circle of faces. These were his friends, his coworkers, part of the world of cops. His world. He raised his glass as...
... a door slammed behind him, and a voice shattered the image from the past. "Hey, Cleary, you asleep, or just checking your eyelids for cracks?" Johnny Betts strolled across the room, working on an order of Chinese takeout. "I tell you, Uncle Lu and the whole tong could've walked through that door and celebrated Chinese New Year, and you wouldn't have even heard them. Your face looks like you just got out of a matinée. What do you see out of that window that's so damn interesting?"
Cleary took a deep breath. "Nothing. I was just daydreaming."
Johnny gave him a disbelieving look. "Yeah. Well, let me tell you something, boss. Chinatown ain't the place to be caught with your pants down and your mind out the window." He offered Cleary some chow mein, then gestured at the headphones. "Whattya got so far?"
Declining the offer of chow mein, the very smell of which threatened to make him sick, he wearily removed the headphones and rubbed his eyes. "Nothing but five hours of Mandarin. I don't suppose you did any better."
Johnny gave an elaborate shrug. "Depends on how you look at it. You were right about the kid being innocent." He hesitated, his eyes gleaming with an expression Cleary could almost believe was excitement. "According to the Joe Boys, these gambling heists are being pulled by some outside operators."
Cleary straightened out of his slump. "Outsiders?" He saw Johnny's proud nod. "Those gang kids actually talked to you?"
Johnny swaggered around the room. "Turns out we belong to the same fraternity"—he grinned—"Sigma Bebop Epsilon A Lula."
"I knew you were good for something, Betts, but I never thought—"
"Hey, they just switched over to AM," Johnny broke in, pointing to the tape recorder.
"W-What?" asked Cleary, trying to follow the conversation.
"They're speakin' English, man. English!"
Cleary jumped up. "Turn it up, damn it! Quick!" Johnny dived at the tape recorder and gave the knob a vicious twist that made Cleary wince. "That's expensive equipment! Be careful!" he snapped at Johnny, then watched the spools turning as the voice of Uncle Lu filled the small room.
"Yes, the Joe Boys understand. Sacrifices are a necessary part of business."
"'Sacrifices,'" said Cleary, looking at Johnny. "The Joe Boys must have been forced to make a deal with the tong—"
Johnny nodded, finishing the thought. "So they gave up Tommy. They don't like it either. It got jammed down their throats from what I could tell."
Cleary motioned to silence as Uncle Lu's quivering voice suddenly resumed. "There's no need for that."
There was a long pause during which Cleary realized that he was listening to one end of a phone conversation. The question was: who was on the other end?
"Yes, that's right," continued Uncle Lu's voice. "The association agrees to the new arrangement—providing we have assurances that the violence will end."
There was another long pause, and Cleary spent it wondering how many 'arrangements' the tong had going. There was the arrangement with the police, with the Joe Boys, and now one with whoever was on the other end of that phone line.
"Your word has always been sufficient," said Uncle Lu's voice. "Payment will be delivered tonight at two A.M. by my nephew, Ko-Chen Lu, at the usual place. Good-bye."
A receiver clicked as Uncle Lu hung up, followed by a very short pause, then the old man uttered one word in Chinese. Cleary didn't need a bilingual dictionary to translate. Uncle Lu had obviously used a very dirty word.
"Payment will be delivered tonight at two a.m. by Ko-Chen Lu," said Johnny in a thoughtful tone of voice.
"With you and me tied to his tail, Betts," said Cleary, grabbing his coat and dancing across the room. "We got 'em, kid
do. Somebody just made the old fox blink." In the exuberance of the moment, he forgot himself and tousled Johnny's hair, a gesture he immediately regretted in view of the depth of hair cream on the kid's pompadour. But what the hell, he thought. Live dangerously.
He did a soft-shoe all the way to the door. "Come on, kid. We're through here, and I've got to see somebody before we set up tonight's tail." He turned around to see Johnny Betts trying to smooth his mangled pompadour, and looking at Cleary as if he were personally responsible for running over Lassie.
The first thing Cleary saw was the bolt of scarlet cloth, spilling a blood-red pool of silk across the room. The sewing machines waited in rows, like domestics lined up for the butler's inspection. Other bolts of cloth, their colors appearing washed out compared to the scarlet, were stacked against the walls. The mirrors were smashed into shards, each a sliver of a shattered dream, each reflecting a shattered woman.
Cleary turned around to Kai-Lee. "They got to you."
Her face was a young-old mask; young in years, old in fatalistic resignation. "My dreams were foolish. There's still a place for me though. They said they'd allow me to continue."
"At a sweatshop," Cleary finished. "Just what Chinatown needs."
"You don't understand..."
"I understand you're letting your brother take the fall for a murder rap."
Kai-Lee stood with downcast eyes, the perfect picture of Chinese womanhood. It made Cleary sick. "We'll wait for him to come back to us. An arrangement can be made."
He grabbed her shoulders and shook her until her black silky hair flew about her face. "An arrangement! Goddamn it, there are enough arrangements in Chinatown, and each one of them costs someone's blood. Or someone's dream," he added, looking around at the sewing machines and bolts of cloth. "Maybe that's what makes me so angry about the tong. They're not satisfied with throwing your brother to the wolves; they have to smash your dream, too. All in the name of some kind of perverted arrangement. Listen to me, Kai-Lee. What difference did it make to them if you had a dance studio? Did it cost them money? No! They took away your dream because it was their way of taking away choice. You chose to do something different. The tong can't tolerate that. No free choice in Chinatown. Fight them! Choose to help your brother! I can prove he's innocent."