“You liked the movie?” he asked, surprised.
“Of course, I did.”
By then they had reached her house. Samuel spent his last dollar on the cab fare. “I’m sorry, Blanche,” he said, embarrassed.
“I’m sorry, too, Samuel. Go home and sleep it off, and don’t drink so much when you’re around me. Good night,” she said, as she turned and bounded up the stairs, never looking back.
Samuel’s hands were deep in his pockets and his shoulders were hunched over. Humiliated, he started walking the twenty blocks to his flat near Chinatown. He thought that he was not only broke—he didn’t even have enough money to buy a pack of cigarettes—but he felt he’d blown his chance to make an impression on Blanche. He concluded that his courtship skills needed polishing, as Melba had often suggested, and that he also needed a better-paying job.
* * *
After a few days, Samuel became anxious to talk with Charles. He wanted to get as much information as he could about any leads Charles had that connected Mathew O’Hara with Reginald Rockwood’s death. He borrowed money from Melba with the promise that he would pay her the following week, and he invited Charles to Chop Suey Louie’s for lunch. It was the only restaurant he could afford.
They arrived at noon, and the place was almost empty, but they sat at the counter, Samuel’s favorite spot.
“Where’s your mother? This is one of the few times I haven’t seen her in her corner,” said Samuel.
“She went to the astrologer. She doesn’t like my brother’s fiancée.”
“What can the astrologer do?”
“Maybe she can prove that they’re not compatible. That would make my mother very happy,” said Louie.
“You remember my friend Charles Perkins. He’s an attorney with the federal government.”
“Nice to see you again, Mr. Perkins. And you, Samuel? I see you’re hanging around with big shots now. I hope you won’t forget your old friends, and you’ll continue betting with me,” he said, laughing.
“Maybe that’s not a good idea,” replied Samuel, “I haven’t won a bet with you for the last three years.”
Charles was seated on the end seat in front of the cash register where Louie usually held court, and Samuel was to his left. They were both drawn to the tropical fish swimming around in the giant aquarium directly in front of them. The big ones chased the small ones into the treasure boxes and holes in the lava rocks where they could hide. Goldie was immobile in one corner on top of some sand. Samuel thought she looked depressed, just like he was.
“Do you want today’s special?”
“Sure,” said Samuel, knowing it would be cheap, since he was paying.
“That’s fine with me,” said Charles.
Louie yelled something back to the kitchen in Cantonese.
“Has anything leaked onto the street that you could attribute to the interrogation of Sandovich?” asked Samuel, turning to Charles.
“Not a word,” said Charles, “and that’s surprising. I thought for sure by now it would have gotten out there and produced some results.”
“I told you that before you brought him in. Melba said he was small potatoes,” said Samuel.
“And who’s that?”
“Just a friend. But she knows everything that goes on in this city. I’d really like to catch whoever killed Rockwood. He was my friend.”
“Only that? Don’t you want to get a promotion in the newspaper and become a reporter?” asked Charles.
“Some of that, too,” admitted Samuel, blushing.
“I’ve already told you it puts me in a bind if I give you confidential information. But you’ve helped me on other occasions, and I want to give you a leg up, so I have kind of a half-assed solution. I’ll provide you information off the record. If anyone tries to get your source, you play dumb. In other words, you didn’t get it from me. Can we agree on that?” proposed Charles.
“That’s great. You’ll tell me everything then, and I won’t say a word.”
“No, not everything, but enough so you’ll have the scoop on the whole story. That is, if we can ever figure out what it is.”
At that very moment, Samuel glanced up at the aquarium and saw the reflection of two Chinese standing at the entrance. There was something about their attitude and something shiny in one of their hands. His mind delayed the connection of what his eyes had seen for a fraction of a second. It was a Tommy gun, and it was pointed directly at him. He reacted by instinct; “Down!” he yelled and pushed Charles off the seat to the floor, falling on top of him, just as the bullets came flying, shattering the counter where they’d been sitting, as well as the aquarium and the cash register where Louie was standing. They ended up blocking the small passageway leading to the kitchen.
Louie didn’t know what hit him. He took six slugs in the chest and head and was dead before he hit the floor behind the counter.
There was pandemonium in the small restaurant. The few patrons there ducked under the tables or remained paralyzed and screaming with fear. And the water from the aquarium, mixed with Louie’s blood and tropical fish, spread all over the floor. The assailants backed up as they fired, then got lost in Chinatown. The shooting only lasted a few seconds, but it seemed like forever.
Afterwards, Samuel remembered it like a photographic sequence, each one in its place for eternity. Several minutes passed before the people understood that the incident was over and they could react. Samuel shook Charles who was still under him, “Are you all right?” he asked, once he could speak.
“Yeah, I’m okay,” said Charles, trembling. His mind still hadn’t figured it all out.
“Louie!” yelled someone at that moment, and several people ran to the spot where he’d been.
Samuel, the closest to him, pounced on his dead body lying behind the counter, a mass of bloody carnage.
Miraculously, no one in the kitchen was hit, but the bullets had made a mess of it. The two people who were still there were hysterical, and the rest had run out the back door screaming. Someone called the police, and soon they heard the sirens of the patrol cars.
Charles pulled himself together and managed to get to a phone. He called the FBI.
“Get an ambulance! Get an ambulance!” yelled Samuel, as he tired desperately to revive his dead friend.
“Forget it, Samuel, he’s gone,” said Charles, reaching down and gently prying the crying man away from the body.
In the next few minutes a crowd gathered at the door, all trying to squeeze in to see what had happened. The police, the FBI, and an ambulance all arrived at the same time. The patrolmen pulled the curious away from the restaurant and started to block the street, while a young officer with a pad and pencil in hand tried to talk to potential witnesses. Two ambulance attendants tried to put Samuel in one of their vehicles. It was difficult to convince them that the blood was Louie’s, not his. Charles showed them his identification and took Samuel by the arm and dragged him to the exit. As they passed a patrol car, parked with its lights flashing, Charles told a policeman to call the Medical Examiner because there was a dead man inside.
“Is he wounded?” asked the cop, referring to Samuel.
“No. But he needs to go home,” he said, again identifying himself.
The policeman directed them to another patrol car, and Charles told the driver where to go. The car, its siren wailing, slowly took off, nudging its way through the gathering crowd.
“Who in the fuck did this?” asked Samuel, still in shock, looking at his clothes and hands, still full of blood.
“Don’t you see, those bastards were after us!” exclaimed Charles.
“Was that the message you expected when you interrogated Sandovich?”
“Are you fuckin’ crazy? If I could have anticipated this, I sure the shit wouldn’t have gone to Chinatown,” snapped Charles, still shaken.
“They killed Louie! He had nothing to do with any of this,” murmured Samuel, with his head in his hands.
* * *
Chop Suey Louie’s death cast a pall over Chinatown; he was a popular and vibrant member of the community. Samuel couldn’t forgive himself for what had happened. He felt responsible. He thought if he hadn’t had the bad idea of going to the restaurant that day for lunch, his friend would still be alive.
He tried to get in touch with Louie’s mother to give her his condolences, but she wouldn’t see him. The person who opened the door let him know that the old lady blamed him for the assassination of her son. She’d always thought that Samuel’s red hair was a sign of the devil, and events had confirmed it. He found out that the rest of his family lived in Waverly Place, but he couldn’t muster up the courage to find them in the labyrinth of streets.
The next Sunday was set aside to mourn Louie’s passing. Samuel couldn’t face it alone so he invited Melba and Blanche to meet him at the Green Street Mortuary in North Beach, the Italian section. Both women were dressed in black and wore small hats of the same color, while Samuel had on his only suit, which for a change was neatly pressed. He wore it with a clean white shirt and a red striped tie. His red eyes were visible from quite a distance.
“Well, well, child, you look handsome,” joked Melba, straightening his tie.
“I’m very sorry about your friend,” said Blanche, moved by Samuel’s obvious grief.
“Why is this happening at an Italian mortuary?” asked Melba.
“Most of their business is Chinese. The owner of the funeral home surely doesn’t care which race his clients belong to,” said Samuel.
“Is that a band outside the funeral home?” asked Blanche.
“That used to be the Chinese Marching Band. Now it’s called the Green Street Mortuary Band. They play at most Chinese funerals,” said Samuel.
“But there’s no Chinese in that band,” Blanche observed.
“That’s because the Chinese didn’t want to join Local 6 of the Musicians Union, so the white guys took over. It didn’t matter to Louie. He loved their music. Every time a funeral passed his restaurant, he took me out onto the street and showed it to me with pride. He told me you could only get this kind of a reception in San Francisco’s Chinatown, nowhere else in the country,” explained Samuel, with tears in his eyes.
The mortuary hall still had its Italian decorations—copies of Renaissance paintings of saints on the walls and statues on pedestals in enclaves on either side of the seating area—a Catholic Church ambiance for Chinese clients. Up in front was Louie’s closed coffin on a stand with several wreaths of different flowers placed on tripods, each with a red ribbon with Chinese writing placed diagonally across it. The hall was full of dignitaries and ordinary people. The mayor and the chief of police were sitting next to Louie’s widow and their three children. The dead man’s mother, seated in the front row, continued unmoved, mute and without shedding a tear. After a long sermon in Chinese, and a shorter one in English, the mourners filed out the front door, each person taking a piece of candy to help remove the taste of death, as Samuel explained it. The crowd went to one side of the stairs leading to the street while the band positioned itself on the other.
When the casket arrived at the top of the stairs, a drum roll started. The pallbearers took the coffin down the steps and put him into the hearse. They were followed by a group of ten women, all dressed in black with veils over their faces, sobbing uncontrollably.
“Poor man, he leaves behind a large family.” Melba commented, moved.
“That’s not his family. Those are wailers, hired by the family to cry for them. Chinese people don’t like to openly express grief, so they pay people to do it for them,” said Samuel.
After the wailers came the family, and further back, the rest of the crowd. Some were carrying paper houses, cars, and even a paper bridge down the steps of the mortuary.
“What’s all that for?” asked Melba.
“These are things he’ll need on the other side. They’ll burn them at the gravesite. It’s a way of releasing them so he can take them with him,” Samuel explained.
“I thought he was a Taoist” said Blanche, when the band started playing a Christian hymn.
“He was, but Chinese people in San Francisco like the band to play Christian hymns and to make as much noise as possible,” said Samuel. “It drives away the bad spirits.”
In front of the hearse, but behind the band, was a red Cadillac convertible with its white top down and a huge photograph of a smiling Chop Suey Louie in the back seat. After the hearse, limousines carrying the family moved into place, and then the autos of the rest of the attendees, including Melba’s beaten-up two-door Ford coupe. The procession went down Green Street to Columbus, where it took a right on Stockton. When it crossed into Chinatown, a flurry of paper money was thrown at the funeral caravan.
“Look at that!” exclaimed Melba.
“It’s fake. It’s called spirit money. It has a slit in the middle so the pesky ghosts and spirits pass through it and get distracted. That way they can’t prevent him from getting where he’s going. You’ll also notice that it didn’t appear until we reached Chinatown. That’s because it’s against the law to litter in San Francisco, but it’s allowed for Chinese funerals as long as it’s done in Chinatown,” Samuel informed her.
The crowds didn’t stop their shopping as the funeral procession moved down Stockton and turned onto Clay and then again onto Grant Avenue, the main street of old Chinatown, with its exaggerated fake pagodas and bright red or green doors. It continued until it came to Waverly Place, where it finally stopped. There was a huge crowd on both sides of the street. The band didn’t miss a note. The beat of the bass drum seemed to intensify, and the clash of the cymbals got louder. A burst of spirit money rained down everywhere, like confetti falling on a parade.
The band made one last stop in front of Chop Suey Louie’s house to give him a chance to adjust to not being alive any longer. Naturally the spirit would be confused for a few days after death, so this one last trip to its former home gave it time to adjust to its new state. Then it could be on its way, explained Samuel to Blanche and Melba.
“Is that why they opened the door to the hearse?” asked Blanche.
“Exactly, and that’s why they throw the spirit money, to distract the spirits again.”
Samuel scanned the crowd and noticed policemen everywhere, some with cameras taking photographs of the bystanders. He recognized Mr. Song, and his loyal assistant, as well as his young niece, all with their heads bowed, paying their respects. He also saw a man with one arm standing on an orange crate taking in every detail of what was going on, more interested in observing the crowd than in following the funeral procession.
The music was so loud it made the street vibrate.
“This sounds like a hoedown more than a funeral procession,” Melba commented.
“It is in a way,” said Samuel. “It’s a celebration of life, but it’s supposed to help Louie get to the other side.”
“If you gotta go, this way’s as good as any,” said Melba. “Good luck, Louie, and God speed!”
* * *
Charles Perkins was in a somber mood. He was sitting at a side table in his cluttered office, his shiny blue suit-jacket draped over the chair and the sleeves of his wrinkled white shirt rolled up to his elbows. His blond hair was greasier than usual. An armed marshal ushered Samuel in. Charles had moved the piles of papers with coffee cup stains on them to one side, making a clearing on the green leather table top for a game of dominoes. He was watching them collapse onto one another until finally all the pieces were down.
“Happy to get them all?” asked Samuel, trying to find a place to sit in all the chaos.
“Yeah. Wishful thinking,” said Charles, noticing his guest for the first time. “I’ve been with the U.S. attorney’s office for years. I’ve prosecuted lots of criminals, some of them really bad guys. But no one, Samuel, I mean, no one, has tried to kill me, not ’til now. It’s unnerving,” he added, with a look of anguish on his face.
“I know what you mean,” said Samuel. “I haven’t been sleeping so well myself.” He took out his ruffled pack of Philip Morris’s and put it up to his mouth, pulling a mangled cigarette out with his lips. “I’ve been racking my brain, trying to figure out if some piece of information you gave Sandovich could have caused those bastards to come after us.” He coughed several times, putting his hand over his mouth.
“We went back and grilled him for six hours, but he wouldn’t crack,” said Charles.
“You’re the boss, Charles,” said Samuel, lighting the cigarette, “but I think you’re barking up the wrong tree. Sandovich wouldn’t risk getting involved in something like this and losing what he’s got going.”
“I know, Samuel, but the point of our spending time with the esteemed sergeant was not to accuse him but to get the names of all the people he talked to after our meeting a couple of weeks ago. He claimed he didn’t talk to anyone, and that the only person who even knew he was there, outside of those present, was his watch commander. The captain who runs Chinatown Vice has an impeccable reputation. But just in case, we’ll keep an eye on him,” said Charles. “We’ve started to tap Sandovich’s phone. Let’s see what that produces.”
“How about taking a longer view of this,” suggested Samuel. “Melba reminded me of our discovery of Reginald’s stash at Mr. Song’s. What d’ya say we see if we can find out who knew about that? Although right now I can’t, for the life of me, figure out who we might have exposed. Do you think that’s who wanted to get us out of the way?”
“I’ll leave that to you. Right now I’ve got my hands full with Mathew O’Hara. His lawyer says he wants to make a deal,” replied Charles.
“What kind of a deal?”
“He’s willing to plead guilty to a lesser offense,” explained Charles.
“Does that mean he won’t go to jail?” asked Samuel.
“No, that dude’s gonna do time. He’ll learn how the other half lives,” said Charles, gesturing at Samuel with his index finger. “How much, depends on what he gives us.”
The Chinese Jars Page 16