The Butcher's Granddaughter

by Michael Lion

  “I don’t know anything about Li’s parents. And I don’t know what the locket means. All I know is that some very rough, very well connected people want it, and we have it, and I don’t know who to give it to.”

  “Give it to?! Li is dead because of that thing! And you just want to find these fuckers and hand it over? The hell with—”

  I broke one of my few cardinal rules, and I slapped her. She wound up and slapped me right back, a solid, stinging blow. It had the effect I wanted. She was now too angry at me to be hysterical. Before she could decide between getting up and leaving or hitting me again, I said, “You aren’t getting this and I don’t know why. You and me are in this together, so get used to it. You could’ve stayed out of it but you didn’t, and I’m alive because you didn’t, and for that I thank you.” I got in her face. “But if you split now, we’ll never get to the bottom of this, and by tomorrow afternoon they’ll be weighing your liver down at L.A. Memorial.” I shoved the locket in her face. “Do you recognize this?”

  She looked at me with derision. “Of course not. I don’t speak Chinese.”

  “Neither do I, but I know these symbols. It’s the number forty-nine.”

  “So what?”

  “So it’s a symbol of the Triad, a sacred number.”

  She gave me a stare that said she severely doubted I knew what I was talking about. I started explaining anyway. “Four times nine is thirty-six, the number of oaths taken at a Triad initiation ceremony. Put this symbol inside a solid black triangle and it’s the sign of the Hak Sh’e Wui—The Black Society. That guy you killed back there had it tattooed a foot high on his chest. He was a soldier in the Chinese Mafia.”

  She went a little pale, but stayed tough. “Yeah. Like these guys give a shit about me.”

  “They do now,” I said heavily.

  “Bird, there was nobody there! How would they know?”

  “The guy you left in the can, first of all. Second, I’ve heard estimates of Chinese membership in the Triads as high as one-in-six.” I set my head back against the damp brick wall and let out a tired, frightened sigh. “There’s nowhere to go,” I said quietly. “There’s nothing we can do. We’re completely fucked. They’ll have members notified everywhere, especially in the L.A.P.D. It’ll be like having terminators on us.”

  Understanding spread across her face, aging her.

  I turned toward her and gave her a sincere look. “Li was my friend, too. We can fight, or we can sit around and wait to die. I’m willing to compromise to stay alive at least long enough to get some retribution, and maybe even a little good old-fashioned revenge. What about you?”

  She said nothing for a long time and then answered clearly and carefully. “Only because it’s Li, you fucking understand? Not for me, and definitely not for you. This is for Li.”

  “Then let’s go.”

  Nodiev Vlostovnik is a Russian transplant, fifteen years now from Moscow, who came to America because it was so wonderful and free. He soon found some men who wrote everything on flashpaper and seemed more than willing to help him make a lot of money fast on something called “horse racing.” It looked like the wave of the future to Noddy, who dropped a few rubles here and there and then was happy he’d made my acquaintance, because he was into those gentlemen for his life savings. It wasn’t much by street standards, so I gave it to him and told him not to worry about it, but next time I’d throw him to the sharks. I don’t think his gratitude will ever end.

  His personal magic seems to be developing photos, and he does his best work at night. I rang the bell, two long blasts, and he was there almost immediately. His studio is a small one that sits back in an alley off Highland Avenue and does a huge business for the nearby movie studios, stills and such.

  “Comrade!” he almost yelled. Noddy was corny. He loved to play up the friendly Cossack bit.

  “Shut up, Noddy. I’m...we’re in trouble.”

  He nodded quickly and shuffled us inside, theatrically checking both ways in the alley before shutting and bolting the door. “What is it, my friend, and who is the beautiful woman?”

  “Tanya, this is Nodiev.” I never bothered with his last name, which was like pronouncing a medication. I let him drool over her for a minute while Tanya looked unimpressed, then I said, “Business.”

  “Yes, yes, yes, always business with you.” He motioned us into a small alcove where there was a table and two chairs. He had just made a pot of incredibly sweet Russian tea, and he poured us each a cup. Noddy always made me feel like I had a personal audience with the Czar. All would be taken care of, his demeanor said. Have some more tea.

  I pulled the locket and the negative wrapped in cellophane out of my jacket. It wasn’t actually a negative, but a positive, like a slide, only larger and unmounted. I’d never seen anything like it. “I need some prints and a couple of copies,” I said.

  He picked up the positive-negative. “Two-and-a-quarter, color. You want a copy of this, or just prints?”

  “No, two copies, one print, eight-by-ten.” I picked up the locket and opened it. “Can you make a blown up copy of this?”

  He scrutinized the tiny contents of the pendant, thick lips pursed and bulging through dense black beard. “Da. No problem. Take time, though. When do you need it, my friend?”

  “Yesterday.”

  “Sunrise,” he said.

  I nodded.

  He said nothing else, but urgently scuffled back to the darkroom, soon followed by clicking and whirring sounds. Tanya had sat silently through the entire exchange. “You hungry?” I asked finally.

  “Yeah, actually.”

  “You wanna get a pizza or something?”

  She said that would be fine, so I ordered on the phone and thirty minutes later we were stuffing our faces, sucking down the tea, and tapping on the darkroom door to ask if Noddy would brew some more. He was, as always, most agreeable.

  The meal was finished and Tanya and I sat in tense silence, like in-laws at a shotgun wedding. We kept sneaking looks at each other, and I caught her eyelids falling shut a couple of times. I went to the darkroom door and tapped lightly. There was some minor cursing in low Russian and the sound of things being rearranged, and then Noddy stuck his round head beyond the door. “What is it? Did you already finish the tea? Would you like more? I can brew.”

  I shook my head and motioned to Tanya. “We need a safe house. Just for tonight. Can you hook us up? I’ll pay you whatever you think it’s worth.”

  Noddy shook his head vigorously, pulling me into the darkroom and shutting the door behind me. “No, you will not. And of course you can stay here tonight. You may stay as long as you like. Is the woman in some kind of trouble?”

  “We both are. And just for tonight, Noddy, would be great. I don’t want you to get involved.”

  “I will hurt whoever is causing you this problem,” he said, puffing up.

  I put a hand on his solid chest. “No, Noddy, please. Someone else is already dead because I didn’t think before I moved. Please, please, stay out of it. Just give us a place to rest and get our heads around this. That’s what I need right now. If there was more you could do, believe me, I would ask.”

  Noddy looked at the ground and pursed his lips. “Very well, my friend. But if I find out who is doing this...” He drew a finger across his throat.

  I nodded, managing to smile a little at his dramatic flourish. This seemed to relax Noddy a bit. I glanced behind me at the door and said, “She and I have been through a lot today. Where can we stay?”

  Noddy opened the door and pointed down a short hallway. “You will stay in my room. It is small but it is comfortable. Uh,” he said, glancing questioningly at Tanya, now awake and staring right at him with no humor, “there is only one bed.” Tanya’s stare got even more mirthless.

  “I’ll sleep on the floor.”

  It turned out I didn’t need to. The room was small but eclectically furnished, with an old fashioned barber’s chair in one corner that Nod
iev clearly used for comfortable reading. There was a small marble-topped table next to it with a few collections of Russian short stories placed neatly on top. I climbed into the chair and got comfortable as Tanya looked questioningly at the bed. She fluffed some pillows and generally nested, and before I could say anything I was asleep and dreaming.

  Hard, painful dreams. Li everywhere, falling back in time. Her lithe, naked body floating around my apartment. Her pleading eyes, deep with concern for her sister, at the Reading Room a week ago. And then spinning backward through our friendship, to that first night. In the haze of exhausted sleep, I relived it all, horribly sharp with detail.

  She had dropped into my life in a way that was neither unique nor romantic. The best word for it is natural, actually.

  Somehow, in a very crowded Gorky’s Café at three in the morning, I had managed to get a booth all to myself. I was, of course, hammered beyond all hope, with my head on my arm and a plate of scrambled eggs and potatoes in front of me. I was trying to sucker-punch a crippling hangover by stuffing myself before crashing in a stupor at Chris Mattis’ apartment up the block. It wasn’t going well. I’d managed a few bites of the eggs and three cups of coffee—I kept falling asleep between sips.

  The place was wall-to-wall. There was a jazz/fusion band named Shop Talk playing that apparently had a loyal following who didn’t tip. The band’s little basket went through the crowd without attracting so much as a handful of rice. Their music was neutral and that was fine with me. It didn’t make me want to dance, but it didn’t make my stomach any worse either.

  I had probably been asleep for about ten minutes when a tiny seed of sobriety, which was all that remained of my consciousness, woke me up so I could take another sip of coffee. I shut my eyes tight with effort and decided to try sitting all the way up this time, instead of just dragging the mug to my mouth at table level. Then I opened them and focused stupidly on the side of Li Nguyen’s face. She was talking about nothing to a vapid-faced girl with bad skin and the all-night eyes of a club hound. They both turned and looked at me and said “Hi,” in unison.

  I don’t think I smiled. I do remember that I managed to say “Hi,” back and nod at both of them. The motion put me back to sleep on my forearm. I drifted in and out, my head sticking to my arm, and had bad dreams—most of them scenarios involving the next morning and Mattis’ bathroom. I was slowly, painfully getting sober, and when I suddenly sat up and said “What?” for no reason, I was at the point where I could close my eyes and feel the booth spin.

  “Your eggs are cold,” she said.

  Someone was talking to me. She was very close, I could feel it. I looked pathetically down at my legs, spread wide under the table in a futile effort to stop the spinning. I looked up, dug my thumbs into my eyes and she came into focus.

  No makeup, simple haircut of straight, blue-black hair, and a beauty mark next to her upper lip that would have been a mole on anyone else. I was too drunk to be witty, so I said, “Where’d your friend go?”

  “Home.”

  I reached what felt like a very long way across the table and grabbed the coffee. It was cold. I grimaced and tried the eggs. She hadn’t lied. When I looked up from the plate again she was gone. I had just enough time to worry that I was hallucinating before she reappeared and placed a new, steaming mug in front of me. She pushed the plate and the old mug away so neither of us would have to look at them. I wrapped both hands around the mug like an orphan with a cup of soup, and drank.

  I was vaguely aware that it was raining. That, and the fact that a lot of time had gone by—the place was empty except for a bum who I hoped looked worse than I did, and a couple of punkers sipping beers and touching each other’s facial piercings.

  Li just looked at me silently, without staring. I don’t know how she did it. It simply didn’t bother me. I waited what I felt was a polite amount of time before I decided she wasn’t going to start this, so I said, “What the hell are you doing?”

  “My name’s Li,” she volunteered. “You sounded interesting.” I wondered what I had mumbled in my stupor that led her to that little observation.

  “Really,” I said through my fingers. I didn’t volunteer my name. My sobriety suddenly flopped over into headache territory. “What time is it?” I looked at my wrist blurrily, forgetting I almost never wear a watch.

  “Does it matter?”

  I said I guessed not. “I wish I was more coherent...”

  “Li.”

  “Right, right. Li. With two e’s?”

  She shook her head. She had worn a small smile on her face since I had come to. It made her look like she knew something I didn’t, but most Asian girls looked like that.

  “With an i.”

  “Vietnamese,” I said thickly.

  “Part Vietnamese, part Chinese. You know the Islander Cafe on Wilshire? My relatives own it.”

  I focused on her hands. Short nails. Skin a little rough. Pretty hands, but they worked hard. “You work there? In the kitchen, maybe?”

  “Yeah,” she followed, with half-surprise. “How’d you know? Not the kitchen, actually. The bar.”

  I pointed to her hands and said something. She blushed nervously and put them in her lap.

  And we talked.

  The sun came up. My headache got worse, but we talked—parents, choices we had made, bad and good, where I came from, where she came from, and not just geographically. She mentioned that she didn’t know where her parents were. After that she wanted to know everything about my family and hung on my every word like she was finding some surrogate emotion.

  I bought breakfast. And we talked.

  We said goodbye hours later with the usual niceties, but we both had that feeling that is so rare in a city of ten million: we would see each other again. It was not a hope, but a certainty.

  I was mercifully torn out of sleep when Noddy emerged from his darkroom down the hall, singing a Russian work song at the top of his lungs. I came to the way I always do, simply lifting my eyelids without moving any other muscle. I distantly wondered how long I had been asleep. Through the bedroom door I heard Noddy’s voice cut off in mid-verse, as he undoubtedly noticed the white cardboard pizza container, and immediately went into a flurry of reprimands revolving around his ability and willingness to cook.

  Tanya slept right through the cacophony. It was the most peaceful I had ever seen her. She was lying on her stomach with her face toward me and a corner of blanket wrapped around her hand and curled under her cheek. Her breathing was shallow and comforting. I let her sleep some more so I could watch her. I knew that as soon as she opened her eyes the hard edge would return to her features and it would be another long day of sparring back and forth, so I wanted her soft and vulnerable a little longer.

  I eased slowly out of the chair and slid to the floor, keeping the chair and my body from squeaking. I cracked the door and looked outside. Noddy stood there defiantly with his hands on his hips. “You do not like my cooking?” he demanded.

  I felt like a piece of shag carpet in a house with a large pet. My hair was matted to one side of my head, and my neck and shoulder were kinked together from sleeping in the chair. I waggled my head around to loosen up and said, “You know I love your cooking, man. But you were busy. With important things.”

  “Da,” he said gruffly, pushing the work at me through the door. “Next time, we eat, OK?”

  “OK.” I took the color print, which was fabulous, and the blowup of the locket, a little grainy but equally impressive, and studied them in the light. “These are beautiful, Noddy. I owe you.”

  “No, you do not. And the insult to my cooking we will discuss another time.” He peered appreciatively over my shoulder. “You are sure that you and the lady are all right?”

  I nodded and thanked him. “We were never here,” I said.

  “Da,” he answered with a smirk, and shut the door.

  I stepped back to the bed and shook Tanya awake. She startled and sat up suddenly
. “Good morning,” I said flatly.

  “Good morning to you, too.” She stretched. Beautifully.

  “We have to go. Now. You need a shower?”

  “You make me feel like I need one. Where are we going?”

  I didn’t answer. It had all suddenly gotten very big, and I realized I was deeply afraid. People who are scared make mistakes, and I couldn’t make any. I looked at her so she could see the fear in my eyes. She didn’t press the issue and silently got herself together and followed me out to the bike. Noddy waved and watched the alley like a spy until we were gone.

  I explained to her along the 10 Freeway into Santa Monica that she was about to enter my world. I didn’t think I would be able to avoid showing her things that were more or less secrets. She expressed her concern in no uncertain terms.

  “I don’t give a shit,” she said.

  I nodded.

  “And I want to take that shower.”

  “Me, too. We’ll get there.”

  I stopped at a phone booth in front of a sporting goods store and dialed a number I had dedicated to memory when I first made it downtown. Chris Mattis had given it to me after we had been repoing for about a month. I hadn’t used it in four years.

  A sleepy voice answered. I said four words. A single number came back and I hung up. I stepped into the sporting goods store and bought a small gym bag. Tanya watched the entire process with mild interest but said nothing. As far as she was concerned, nothing had happened that was beyond her control. She was content to ride along. I sincerely hoped it would stay that way.

  At a bank four blocks later I pulled out a thousand dollars in cash. I kept three hundred and put seven in the bag. Still no questions from Tanya.

  We drove to the Garment District and pulled up to the back entrance of a men’s clothing place that sold Hugo Boss suits at prices that Rodeo Drive never saw. I put the gym bag on the top step and said, “You ready for that shower?”

  “Yeah. And after that I’ll ask you what the hell is going on.”

  “Good, because maybe by then I’ll know.”