by Holly Baxter
“I do,” Elodie said. “Ordinary people listen to the radio and they like to hear about other ordinary people sometimes.”
“Like Fu Manchu?” Wilson managed a smile.
Elodie brought out one of her late father’s favorite sayings. “Even Fu Manchu has to put on his trousers one leg at a time.”
“Doesn’t wear trousers.”
“Stop it, Drew,” Sal said. “I think she’s right.”
Wilson shrugged. “Prove it.”
“Well—” Sal turned and rummaged in the big handbag she had brought with her. She withdrew a thick sheaf of typewritten paper. “Let’s start with the manager. I thought we could call him Mr. Dunning.”
“Because he duns the guests for payment?” Wilson was obviously feeling better.
Sal ignored him. “And he has a receptionist called Molly Pritchett,” she continued. “She has a crush on Mr. Dunning.…”
“Who doesn’t know it because he’s too busy running the hotel,” put in Elodie.
Sal grinned and pointed to a paragraph on the second page. “You got it.”
The morning continued like this, and Elodie found that she could think in radio terms. She even impressed Drew Wilson with some of the things she brought out. It was wonderful. She liked Sal and thought she might even eventually like Wilson. They worked steadily for three hours. And then she made the mistake of mentioning the murder at the Lee house.
“I heard about that,” Wilson said.
“But it wasn’t in the papers.” Elodie was surprised.
Wilson looked vague. “I heard it someplace.”
“But you can’t remember where or when.” Sal obviously knew Wilson of old. She turned to Elodie and sank back against the leather of the couch, her eyes alight. “Tell.”
So Elodie told.
“Must have been Fu Manchu,” Wilson muttered, when she had finished. He seemed rather fond of Fu Manchu.
“Do you know what the word mingdow means?” Elodie asked them.
Sal shook her head, but Wilson mused half to himself. “Sounds familiar.”
“Everything sounds familiar to you.” Sal was exasperated. “To hear you tell it, you know everyone and have been everywhere and nothing is a mystery to you.”
“About sums it up.” Wilson grinned at Elodie. “She’s jealous because she never reads a book and never goes anywhere. Lives at home with her old mother and sixteen cats.”
“I live at home, too,” Elodie said, before Sal could defend herself. “But we only have two cats. Do you really have sixteen?” she asked Sal in amazement.
“Of course not.” Sal went over to the pencil sharpener and began to wind it so hard she broke the lead. “And my mother isn’t that old, she’s just in her sixties and she’s a doctor, so there.”
“My mother’s a teacher,” Elodie said, proudly.
“Mine is a bootlegger.” Wilson was perfectly serious. “She runs a blind pig in her basement.”
Sal sighed. “It’s true.”
“My goodness,” Elodie said.
“I never drink there, of course,” Wilson continued. “She makes it herself, and it would take the shine off anybody’s linoleum, believe me.”
Despite Sal’s endorsement, Elodie wasn’t certain whether to believe him or not. She knew there were literally thousands of speakeasies and so-called blind pigs in Chicago now. She knew that quite ordinary girls like Bernice were quite capable of making bathtub gin for a party, although she had never been to one herself. Maybelle had. Maybelle went to a lot of parties and sometimes quite scandalized their mother with her tales. Mrs. Browne was convinced you couldn’t touch pitch without it sticking to you, but Maybelle was neither a drinker nor was she “fast.” She was just a young woman who led a busy social life in one of the most corrupt and hedonistic cities in the world. Most of the parties she attended were connected with her boss and his business. Elodie was pretty sure that though the liquor flowed freely at them, his parties were quite respectable, and that the literary and artistic guests were perfectly respectable, too. Otherwise Maybelle wouldn’t go, because Maybelle, for all her vanity and beauty, was an extremely sensible young woman. And she was Mrs. Browne’s daughter.
Nevertheless, you couldn’t live in Chicago without being aware of the immorality and shameless breaking of the Prohibition everywhere. There were stories every day in the papers, and then there was Hugh, who told her even more. There were killings and beatings; there was blatant prostitution, doping with hashish and cocaine, and gambling. The politicians were involved, the police, too. A lot of people were out for anything they could get in these very hard times. All because of Them. She hated Them, and yet They fascinated her.
She had brought up the party at Mr. Lee’s because of Mr. Ryan being there. “He had the loveliest manners you ever saw,” she had told Sal and Drew. “If I didn’t know otherwise, I would never have suspected him of being what he is. We need someone like that staying at the hotel.”
That was what had brought the work to a standstill. Elodie wished she had kept her mouth shut, but it was too late.
“Chinamen shooting each other,” Sal mused, when Elodie had finished. “Makes a change from the names we usually see in the papers. They’re mostly Italian and Irish these days.”
“Plus a few Slovaks.” Wilson almost sat up. “Especially out in Cicero.”
“Still, I don’t suppose it’s anything we could use in our show,” Sal continued regretfully. “Too exotic. Too strange.”
“Seems a shame to waste it. You say you know this Lee guy’s secretary?”
“Yes.”
“Maybe you could find out more from her. Maybe it would be a whole new series we could develop.” Wilson was actually sitting upright, now, a little flushed with excitement. “Don’t they call them Tongs or something?”
“What?”
“Chinese gangsters,” Wilson said. “Something that begins with a T, anyway.”
“It would never play,” Sal said, firmly. “And nobody would sponsor it.”
“Maybe a Chinese laundry?” Wilson said, subsiding.
“Very funny.” Sal was not amused. “We’ve got enough on our plate with ‘Imperial Hotel,’ we don’t need to add Chinamen to the mix.”
“Not yet, anyway,” Wilson said. “Somebody must wash the sheets and towels at the hotel. Why not a Chinese laundryman?”
“He doesn’t give up easily,” Sal said to Elodie. “Now, what about this bellboy—what did we call him? Spike?”
Elodie took a surreptitious glance at her watch and thought she would faint from hunger if they didn’t stop soon. “I have to meet my friend for lunch.”
But Sal shook her head, and rummaged in her huge bag again. “I brought sandwiches,” she said. “I hope you like pastrami.”
“But Bernice…”
Sal leaned over and spoke sotto voce. “If Drew leaves this room for lunch we won’t see him for the rest of the day.”
“Not true,” protested Drew.
“Absolutely true.” Sal glanced at Elodie. “Tell you what, you go down and meet your friend today, and we’ll go on working, all right? But after this…”
“I understand.” Elodie rose quickly. She didn’t want to upset Sal, and she certainly didn’t want Wilson to disappear. Sal had impressed upon her how much work lay ahead, and though he was sarcastic and easily distracted, she had quickly seen that Wilson was a wonderful writer. He “knew a lot of words.”
She was impatient in the elevator down to the basement staff cafeteria. She couldn’t wait to hear what Bernice had to say about Saturday night, and she wanted to tell her all about Sal and Drew. To celebrate her new job, today was to be one of their rare hot meal days. Elodie chose corned beef and cabbage, something they never had at home. She had loved it ever since Hugh had taken her to an Irish speakeasy where they served food in front and booze in back. Elodie liked beer although she never touched hard liquor, and at this particul
ar speak they had the most amazing black beer, which the proprietor brought in through Canada especially. He called it “stout.” She wished she had a glass of it to accompany her lunch, and smiled at the thought of such a thing being served in the ultra-respectable Gower Building Staff Cafeteria. She kept watching the door, expecting Bernice any minute.
But though she ate slowly, and lingered over her dessert and coffee, Bernice never appeared.
Chapter Seven
Archie Deacon was furious.
“Who kept it out of the papers? Who sat on it?”
Captain Brett looked out of the window. “Does it matter?”
“Of course it does. Who’s interested in this, all of a sudden? Webster’s disappearance got covered—why not his murder?”
Brett turned his chair back and stared at him. “Murder?”
“Of course. It’s perfectly clear—that guard shot Webster to shut him up. It was the guard he was afraid of, the sight of him coming with his gun out made him grab that knife—he told Lee ‘Look out!’ didn’t he?”
“We can’t be sure what he said,” Brett pointed out. “Nobody exactly agreed on anything that happened in those few minutes.”
“That girl Elodie Browne was clear.”
“She was the only one. Why believe her?”
“Because she’s afraid we’ll think she was involved,” Archie said, surprising himself.
“I wondered about that. You think she is?”
“I don’t know for sure. But she was on the scene when Webster was kidnapped, and there she was again when he was shot. We could make a case, I suppose. But we’d need more evidence.”
“You got her statement?”
“Not yet. She was supposed to come down and give it, but she hasn’t appeared.”
“Find her. Get it. We want this thing wrapped up and put away.” Brett looked uncomfortable. “Pressure all the way from New York, because of Miss Hutton’s being there. And from the mayor’s office, because of Ryan. And from the Chinese consul, because of Lee. Nobody wants it talked about.”
“Or dealt with?”
“Same thing.”
“I want to talk to that guard again.” Archie stood up and went toward the door.
“Can’t.”
Archie turned and stared at Brett. “Why not?”
“Gone. Chinese consul got a lawyer, sprung him.”
“Where’s he living?”
“I have no idea,” Brett said, looking embarrassed. “There seem to have been some oversights when he was being booked and released.”
Archie stared at him. “You mean he’s disappeared?”
“Something like that.”
“Damn it, Captain, he killed Webster on purpose, I’m sure of it. We have to talk to him again, maybe with an interpreter to get things absolutely straight.”
“He was doing his job,” Brett said, stubbornly. “Guarding Lee and the stuff in that strong room.”
“For three weeks! What if he was put there?”
“Who by?”
“How the hell should I know? But he was there at the right minute to shut Webster up.”
“Coincidence.”
Archie stared at his captain for a long time. “You bastard,” he said, quietly.
Brett took the insult with surprising equanimity. “I’m only a captain, Deacon. Go talk to the Commissioner. Go talk to the Mayor. Go talk to whoever you damn well please but leave me out of it.” Brett turned his chair back toward the window. “I don’t want to know.”
***
On her way back from her solitary lunch, Elodie went to Mr. Lee’s office, which took up almost all of the far end of the southern corridor. The door marked Reception had no glass in it—it was very solid-looking wood, quite out of keeping with the general style of the building. She tried it, but it was locked. When she knocked, it was some time before it was answered. With much clicking, it finally opened to reveal a small Chinese man in a severe black business suit.
“We closed.” He began to shut the door in her face.
“I just want to see Miss Barker,” she said, pressing a hand against the motion of the door. Her shoes were too flimsy to risk putting her foot between the door and jamb. “She was supposed to meet me and she didn’t.”
“Miss Barker not here today.” The little man opened the door a bit wider. Elodie realized why the solid door was kept locked; indeed, there seemed to be some kind of metal sheet embedded in it. Beyond his shoulder, she could see glass-fronted cabinets all around the walls. In them were small statues and bowls and carvings of pale green and translucent cream.
“Is that jade?” Elodie asked, impulsively, pointing.
The man glanced behind him. “You friend of Miss Barker?”
“Yes. My name is Elodie Browne.”
He nodded. “She speak of you,” he said, surprising her. He glanced over his shoulder again. “Would you like to see?”
“Oh, yes, please,” Elodie breathed.
He checked his watch and stepped back. “Only for moment,” he said. “We closed today.”
“I understand,” Elodie nodded. She walked over and slowly moved along in front of the glass cabinets while he relocked the outer door. The objects were even more impressive close up.
The little man came over to stand closely beside her, obviously slightly worried that what he was doing was against his orders. But he was kind enough to answer her questions, seemingly as proud of what Mr. Lee had on display as if it were his own.
“That jade, Han period,” he said, indicating a wonderful deep green horse’s head, with a graceful curving neck. “And that nephrite, much older.” This was a small simply carved beaker in a extraordinary shade of pink.
“Is nephrite the same as jade?”
“All same. Different sources.”
The nephrite beaker had a waxy inner glow that made the pale pink seem almost alive, while the surface of the horse’s head was shinier. She longed to touch them both. “But they are different colors.”
“Jade come in all colors. More colors than man can see,” was the confusing answer.
Further along there was a particularly beautiful curved and graceful figure of a woman holding a fan. The figure was white with veins of brown that seemed to have been purposely highlighted by the carving. How could that be?
“Kwan Yin,” the man said. “Good luck.” He, too, had trouble with the letter “l” as Mr. Lee had. It wasn’t exactly an “r” as caricaturists would have you believe, but it was a gentle difference she found delightful. She wished he would talk more.
She also was very taken with some dark red beads, heavily carved. “These are beautiful. Red jade?”
“That carnelian, not jade.”
“And this?” Elodie pointed to a carved box, also scarlet. “Is that carnelian, too?”
“No. That lacquer box.”
Elodie wanted to ask about all the small metal objects, too. That they were of gold or silver was plain, but while some of the shapes were familiar, such as a bird or a dragon, there were others to which she couldn’t give a name. There were lots of small highly decorated boxes, some combs, a long line of jade plaques she was told made up a belt, and three amazing vases covered all over with complicated designs, two in simple blue and white, the other highly colored and gilded. She could have spent hours looking at everything, but she could see the little man was getting impatient. Regretfully she thanked him and went toward the door.
As she did it suddenly was thrown open and the most beautiful and exotic woman Ellie had ever seen stood before them, clearly annoyed.
“Who is this?” she demanded of the old man.
“Friend of Miss Barker. She liked to see the jade.”
“Well, you should never have let her in.” The woman was Chinese, small and exquisite, but dressed in full and expensive Western style. She had glossy black hair that was cut in sharp wings that nearly met, like scimitars, beneath her chi
n. A tiny hat was tilted over one eye, and she wore a yellow suit of silk brocade. Her shoes and handbag were alligator, and around her slender golden throat she wore a necklace of matched dark green beads that was surely jade.
“You will leave immediately,” she told Elodie imperiously. Then she walked straight past and entered an inner office, slamming the door behind her.
Elodie stood shocked for a moment. The old man looked apologetic. “Miss Chou,” he said, as if that were sufficient explanation for the woman’s bad manners. He obviously didn’t like Miss Chou. Elodie wondered if anyone did.
She started again toward the door, then stopped. “You speak Chinese, don’t you?” she asked in a low voice, and then realized what a stupid question it was. He just nodded.
“Can you tell me what mingdow means in English?”
She had seen Caucasian people go pale, but the little man’s yellowish skin went absolutely grey, and he drew his breath in between his teeth with a long hiss.
“No,” he said. He moved the open door back and forth. “You go now.”
She hadn’t meant to upset him. How strange, she thought, just one word can do that to someone. What on earth could it mean? Was it some kind of swear word—had she shocked him by saying it? “Will you tell Miss Barker I was asking for her?”
“I tell her when she come in. Don’t know when. Working for Mr. Lee at house today. Maybe more days. You go now,” he urged, hurriedly.
“Oh. Well, thank you, very much.”
He said no more, and shut the door quickly behind her. She stood there as all the locks clicked shut once more. After a minute she heard him dialing a telephone and then came the sound she remembered so well. The gabble. He was speaking Chinese to someone, and among all of it she heard again the strange word.
Mingdow.
He sounded desperate, frightened, angry.
Mingdow.
Slowly, she turned and headed for the reception area and beyond, to Room 1054, and the imaginary developments of the Imperial Hotel, which now seemed a bit less intriguing than they had before.
***
Mr. Lee Chang hooked the receiver back onto the telephone and stared at it for a moment as he thought. Who on earth was this girl Old Ling was gabbling about, and how did she know that word? He looked over at Bernice Barker, who was working quietly at a small desk in the corner. “A friend of yours just called at the office,” he said, calmly.