Asian Pulp

by Asian Pulp (retail) (epub)

  Suddenly the firing stopped. “Is Ranger Farnell there yet?” a voice shouted from the direction of the bar.

  “Recognize it?” asked O’Bannon.

  Farnell shook his head as he cupped his hands around his mouth to form a crude megaphone and shouted back, “Yep, I’m here. What do y’all want of me?”

  “Come out from behind that van and we’ll talk about it,” the voice replied.

  “Let the hostages go first.”

  The voice snorted in a crude laugh. “I ain’t got no hostages. Just said that to get you Rangers here. They’s all dead. I done ’em in just for the kicks.”

  Farnell stood and strode toward the back of the van. “You sick bastard. I’m comin’ for you.”

  “That’s what I’m counting on,” came the laughing response.

  Farnell reached the back of the van and was about to step out from behind cover when there came a crashing noise from the building behind him and O’Bannon. A body flew out of a second story window and landed crumpled at his feet. O’Bannon scrambled over to look at the latest arrival to the scene of the unfolding drama. “I’ll be damned, it’s Jake Donovan.”

  “You know him?” asked Farnell.

  “Yep. Low-life local gunman with a reputation for target shooting. I’m guessin’ the target was your back as soon as you stood up.” O’Bannon looked up at the building behind them. “But how come he didn’t take the shot and ended up nose divin’ through a window instead?”

  Farnell reached down and pulled something from the breast pocket of Donavan’s shirt. He passed it to O’Bannon. “That’s why.”

  O’Bannon looked down at the folded paper flower in his hand.

  The Irishman looked up at his fellow Ranger with a quizzical look on his face, and opened his mouth as if to start to say something, but before a word passed his lips, he stopped and tilted his head to one side as if intently listening for something.

  “What is it?” asked Farnell.

  “Your man across the street with the Tommy Gun.”

  “What about him.”

  “He’s stopped running off his mouth, and his machine gun too.”

  Farnell realized he was right. The scene had fallen eerily quite.

  The two Rangers exchanged glances and with a silent three count rushed to opposite ends of the van, broke cover and dashed across the road to take up position on either side of the bar’s torn up window and doorway. O’Bannon spun out of position and dropped kicked the door, splintering it off its hinges. With gun drawn he rushed into the interior.

  Farnell followed.

  The bar was dark except for the shafts of light coming in from the shattered front window. The barman was slumped over his place of trade with a single bullet shot to the side of his head. Blood and brain matter settled where normally whiskey flowed. In a booth lay slumped the corpses of what he assumed had been the bar’s only patrons. They had chosen an unlucky morning to sample the hair of the dog.

  In the circle of light thrown by the cascading sun lay the gunman. The Tommy gun on the floor at his side. There was no blood nor obvious wounds, but his neck was at an unnatural angle. A pose that Farnell had already witnessed.

  O’Bannon was kneeling over the body. In his hand he was holding yet another origami Lotus Blossom. “Boyo, you need to introduce me to this guardian angel of yours.”

  “Tomorrow,” Farnell said quietly as he turned and walked out of the bar.

  * * *

  “Why do we always meet in a tavern, sensei?” Karin asked Sakai-san.

  “I like taverns.” He smiled in return.

  “They are lowly places full of crude people.” Karin wiped the spilt beer from the table between them, and brushed the bench with her jacket sleeve before she sat down.

  “The lowest of the low go unseen, in that way they learn the secrets of the highest born. If you really want to know what is happening in the lord’s castle, you need go no further than the nearest tavern.” Sakai-san swept his arm to indicate the other patrons scattered around the premises. “Crude is a state of mind, not a social rank. Do not judge people by their circumstance. Some of the crudest people I have known sleep on silk sheets, and some of the most noble lie on straw next to their pigs. If I am to train you, you must learn these things.”

  * * *

  “An Irish bar? Seriously?” O’Bannon shook his head. “Could you get more cliché?”

  “Not my choice,” Farnell responded, as he pushed his colleague through the door.

  Farnell steered O’Bannon toward the rear of the bar where he could see a group of figures huddled together. All were wearing loose fitting black jackets and trousers.

  “What is this? A pajama party?” asked O’Bannon.

  Farnell cuffed O’Bannon across the crown of his head. “Don’t be an ass. These folks could eat you for breakfast.”

  At the sound of Farnell’s voice, one of the group stood up and turned around.

  “You are here, Ranger.” Karin Konishi bowed.

  Farnell executed a short neat bow in return. He then turned to O’Bannon, “You asked to meet my guardian angel. Well, here she is. Karin Konishi, may I present my fellow Ranger, Mick O’Bannon.”

  The Irishman snorted in derisive laughter. “She’s just a wee slip of a girl, She could no’ harm a fly.”

  “You saw some examples of her handiwork yesterday, Mick. Those were some mighty large flies.”

  “If ye say so.” O’Bannon sounded far from convinced.

  Karin ignored the remark and turned to the table indicating the men that sat around it. “These are my father’s men.”

  Ten Japanese warriors rose in unison as one and executed their own bows to the Rangers.

  “How did they get here so soon?” Farnell asked.

  “We have been in your country for several months,” one of them replied. “Our master sent us to try and uncover the route of the heroin being distributed and stop it. We were scattered to the winds.”

  “So how come y’all here now?” Asked Farnell.

  “We received word from our sensei, Sakai-san” the speaker continued, “that our master had been dishonored and that we were now ronin. He told us to congregate here, be patient, and await for the arrival of the new head of our clan.” The warrior bowed again, this time in the direction of the young woman at the head of the table. “The Lady Karin. She too is now ronin.”

  “What’s this robin thing?” asked O’Bannon, somewhat confused.

  Karin laughed, amused. “Not robin, but ronin. It means a masterless samurai. A warrior who no longer has a lord to serve and protect.” Farnell was surprised to see that when she laughed the years fell from her countenance revealing a pretty young woman beneath the hardened warrior he had witnessed so far. Her face was momentarily a beacon of light innocence.

  “But they follow you now?” O’Bannon asked.

  “I may lead them, but I cannot be their master. We may not be able to serve and protect my father, but we can avenge him.”

  “Eleven of you against Orusawa’s one hundred?” Farnell shook his head.

  “We are not just eleven,” Karin returned to her solemn fixed expression. “We are eleven ronin.”

  “And two Rangers,” O’Bannon added, surprising himself.

  Farnell looked at his colleague and raised a questioning eyebrow in the Irishman’s direction.

  “Ah, what the hell.” The Irishman smiled, “It should be a good fight and someone needs to stop that blighter from spreading his muck around.”

  Farnell nodded. “Thirteen it is then.”

  * * *

  “Yariyagata naaaa!” Orusawa swore and stared at the crumpled telegram in his hand for the second time, as if rereading it would change the message inside. “Warehouses don’t burn down on their own. It has to be the work of that devil Sakai, he has to be in Osaka. No one else would have the nerve.”

  The sumo threw the offending message across the room, not caring where it fell. He pounded across the roo
m shouting the name of his long suffering, but extremely well paid secretary: a woman who was happy to exchange cash for her sense of ethics and the occasional violation of her person.

  There was no answer.

  Throwing the connecting door open, the enraged Orusawa was greeted by an empty office. Without breaking pace he strode across to the door at the top of the access stairs and pulled it open, still shouting her name. Still no answer.

  He looked down the stairs. No sign of his secretary, No sign of the two guards that were meant to be posted in the stair well either.

  Now his internal alarm was going off. He spun and at a speed that you wouldn’t expect from a man of his size and raced back into his office, making a grab for the sword that lay on his desk.

  There was no sword,

  In its place sat a carefully folded origami sculpture, in the shape of a lotus blossom.

  Standing behind the desk was a slight figure of a girl, dressed in black. In her hand she held the Konishi clan sword.

  She smiled. This time there was no sunshine in the smile, it was a smile of death. A smile of vengeance.

  “I was wondering when you would make an appearance. You seem to have eluded my men every step of the way.” As Orusawa grinned at her, his whole body seemed to tense, the muscles expanding, and his considerable bulk stretching the material of his western style suit almost to breaking point. “Sakai is too much of a coward to face me. He sends a girl to do a warrior’s job.”

  The girl stood in silence.

  “If that is the way it is to be.” Orusawa’s grin disappeared, as he leapt across the desk toward her, his muscles carrying him with surprising grace and agility.

  Karin lightly stepped to one side as her opponent sailed past her and landed on his feet near the bookcase at the rear of the office.

  Orisawa grabbed for a shelf and suddenly he held a stout wooden staff to which was attached a sharp blade with a curved tip, a naginata, a weapon normally associated with warrior monks. The sumo started to whirl the blade around him like a windmill. “Did you think your precious tachi would be the only weapon in here, girl? A true warrior is always prepared.”

  “You are no warrior. You are a demon.”

  “Ah, it speaks. I was beginning to wonder.” He advanced toward her, still spinning the blade around him.

  As the spinning naginata reached her, Karin raised her sword, twisting it so that the blade’s broad side and strength acted as a shield deflecting the blow. She felt contact reverberate along its length and into her two handed grip, forcing her to take an involuntary step back.

  Her opponent sensed the movement and stepped forward to crowd her believing he had the advantage. She dropped to one knee, pulled the sword close in to her, and thrust upwards. The curved blade of the sword ran across the man’s chest, drawing blood. Karin rolled away as her opponent grunted, and ignoring his wound, turned to pursue her across his office.

  She, now clear of him, stood in the middle of the room with her feet firmly planted, both hands on the grip of the sword held out in front of her.

  “You were lucky, girl.”

  “I m no girl. I am Karin, keeper of the house of Konishi. I am ronin.”

  “You are dead, girl.”

  The bleeding man once again rushed Karin, Her feet remained firmly planted, her blade twisted to deflect his, and as it slid along her sword she twisted into his arc of movement letting the momentum push his blade down and away. The torque on the shaft caused the staff of the naginata to slip from his hand, and his weapon dropped to the floor. Orusawa roared in rage and used the only weapon he had left, his bulk. He was a sumo. He threw himself at her, grabbing and wrapping his arms around her body, oblivious to the sword now biting into his arm. He started to squeeze trying to drive the breath out of her.

  She felt as if she was going to panic, to start gasping for breath. She felt her grip loosen on her sword, even though it stayed in place jammed between them and embedded in the big man’s arm. The sumo lifted her off her feet. He was in total control.

  The girl went limp in his arms.

  The sumo knew it was time to finish things. He released his hold and let the unconscious girl drop to the floor. He pulled the ancient troublesome sword from the wound on his arm and let it drop too. Reaching behind him he pulled his tanto dagger from where it had been tucked in his pant’s belt. He would dispatch her the ancient way that women were dealt with, a cut across the artery on the neck.

  The dagger blade was inches from her skin when the shot rang out. Orusawa staggered back as the bullet tore into his shoulder. At the same moment he saw the girl’s eye open, her hand grabbed the sword that lay nearby. He howled as the Konishi family tachi sliced into his wrist, severing the hand holding the dagger.

  Bleeding from his wounds, the large man collapsed into a heap on the floor.

  The girl stood up, brushed herself down and looked at the figure standing in the doorway. “Guns are not weapons of honor, Ranger.”

  “That may be Ronin. But sometimes they can be an instrument of justice.” David Farnell slipped his weapon back into his holster and bowed in the direction of Karin Konoshi in a sign of mutual respect.

  * * *

  The rain was falling in Osaka as the hunched figure of a small man slowly limped toward the grave of his beloved master to pay his respects. Standing before the marker stone, the man bowed his head in a mixture of greeting and supplication. In his hand he held an old photograph that had been carefully folded into the shape of a lotus blossom. He placed the origami sculpture on the plinth of the grave marker and softly muttered, “It is done.”

  THE OPIUM DRAGON

  by

  David C. Smith

  — :: —

  1.

  The Garden Beyond All Gardens

  It was the third body in as many months, the latest of Chicago’s boys in blue found with the back of his head broken open by a .32 round and left along 22nd Street, the unofficial border of Chinatown, right out in the open where automobiles drove by and pedestrians hurried past. Harry Tallmadge, in his damp overcoat, stared at the corpse as though he expected it to sit upright and address him, give him the facts about how it had happened. Tallmadge pulled his hat brim more tightly down his forehead to protect against the April drizzle and pulled a pack of Chesterfields from his vest pocket, stuck one in his mouth, lit it with a wooden match, blew out a mouthful of heavy smoke, and continued to wait for the dead man to speak.

  Across the street, on the other side of the heavy coupes and roadsters that went by, a few Chinese men and women, some in traditional san and koo blouse and pants, going about their business, looked over at the police and then turned away, unimpressed. Beside Tallmadge stood two young officers in dripping slickers and hoods and a young Chinese man, Nick Wong, dressed in a cloth cap and wool pants and a worn brown jacket, part of some suit he’d found somewhere. Tallmadge had met him a couple of years earlier when he’d been investigating a case in Chinatown, he forgot now which one, and had asked a question of the onlookers standing around. Nick Wong, just someone in the crowd, had answered him. Nothing dangerous. Nothing to compromise Nick’s position, if he had one, in his community. But it had led to another question, then to an informal meeting with Detective Tallmadge, and then, when Harry learned that Nick was athletic, to an invitation to the gym in the South Loop where Tallmadge liked to box.

  He had initially drawn stares and a few harsh comments, this young Chinese man, when he joined Tallmadge for some sparring, but the other men in the gym soon learned to respect him. Nick was in good shape and a fairly good amateur lightweight—he certainly held his own against the taller Tallmadge—and he had shown the brutes with their medicine balls and iron kettles a few Chinese temple boxing tricks. T’ai chi chuan, he called it, and the idea was to let your opponent become his own enemy. Use whatever he’s doing to help him on his way down. It was Nick’s method of letting these men know that he could be just another visitor to the gym or, if they wan
ted trouble, that he could just as easily take whatever they were dishing out and turn it against them.

  Tallmadge never did master the few moves Nick had demonstrated to him, and he and the other men never did quite get the knack of being compliant with an opponent instead of hitting back with the best they had, but those sparring sessions had led—not quite to friendship, it couldn’t be called friendship—but to what Tallmadge considered mutual understanding. A young Chinese man sufficiently modern and American enough not to let the old ways from Swatow or Canton or wherever he was from stop him from being his own person.

  Tallmadge said to him now, to Nick and the two young officers there, “He had a wife and a son. They don’t deserve this.” Deciding at last that the dead man wasn’t going to reveal anything, he lifted his head and said to Nick, “We can’t have this.”

  Nick told him, “You are wrong to send your police into our business. We will settle it.” His English was a bit imperfect, and he spoke cautiously.

  Tallmadge told him, “Can’t do that. It’s your problem when it’s your people. You kill Chicago cops…”

  Nick said nothing. He glanced at the two officers. They had been staring at him as if he were something completely different from themselves; now they quickly looked away.

  “It’s one of the tongs,” Tallmadge said.

  “No. They fight only among themselves,” Nick told him. “This is why they separated.” He meant the Hip Sing Tong, which had stayed in the Loop while the On Leong Tong moved here, farther south. “And they do not kill with bullets.”

  “They haven’t up to now. Nick, I’m going to ask you to help me.”

  There was the slightest hint of a threat beneath his words. Help me, he was saying, or there’ll be hell to pay. We can’t have Chicago cops killed in Chinatown. Chinatown will answer for it.

  Nick told him, “Be patient. It takes time.”

  “We’re out of time.” Tallmadge turned as a morgue ambulance came down the street and, pulling off to the side, braked loudly. Two men in white jackets and caps jumped out, walked around and pulled open the back doors and took out a cloth stretcher. They approached Tallmadge and the others and the corpse.