by S. J. Rozan
“Not hard to believe,” Lu answered, and then sat straight up, as I did, when my phone rang. He handed it to me.
“Not a sound,” I said to him, to Ming and Strawman. Into the phone: “Smith.”
“On speaker again?”
“Not a lot of places I can go besides the car, Kevin.”
“Oh, poor you. I heard you were in trouble. Charlie Chan Junior told me. Hi, Charlie.”
“He’s not here. I dropped him off. This was getting too hot for a kid.”
“Oh. Well, that’s okay, you still have fat Hal, you need any help. What kind of trouble?”
“Jesus, what do you think? Cops!”
“But you did maneuvers? Evade, resist, escape?”
“I managed. What the hell comes next, Kevin?”
“Well, that depends. Did you get the bag?”
“Yes.”
“Yes! Yes, he got the bag! Then it worked? Jasmine?” He suddenly sounded as excited as a kid. “That was great, wasn’t it? You know how hard it was to build that thing? Did it work? Tell me it worked!”
Lu growled something. I shot him a warning glance.
“You mean, did one end dump the other in the water? Yes, you son of a bitch. Yes, it worked.”
“Oh, swee-eet! You loved it, right?”
“Fuck you.”
“You’re really no fun, you know that? But anyway, you have the clues? And Jasmine’s in hooker heaven? Wonder what they do up there. I mean, the hookers get their choice of studs all day, or what?”
“The cops’ll be all over this, Kevin. Sooner or later some girl at some whorehouse is going to tell them there’s a difference between you and me.”
“Well, they don’t have a photo of me, so that’s not so scary.”
“You don’t think those places have hidden cameras?”
Lu knit his eyebrows in a look that said I was crazy. I shrugged. I knew there were no cameras: high-class clients would vanish like smoke if they had a glimmer of an idea they’d been taped. I was just trying to rattle Kevin.
“Oh. Oh. Hmm, you think they do? Well, you know what, that’s okay. Even if they know my face they’re still not gonna find me. It makes the frame fit you not quite so tight, but it’s still good. Yeah, what the hell. Hope I looked good, though. In the photos.”
“Suit yourself. But I don’t get it, Kevin. Jasmine, the seesaw, it doesn’t follow the pattern. The other times there weren’t clues with the bodies, or bodies with the clues.”
“Well, Jasmine wasn’t a body when you found her, was she? You made her one!”
“Still.”
“Still. Still. Still, Bill, kill. Kill Bill. Hey, you see that flick? I loved it. Thought about you the whole time. That scene in the rain, man, that was hot, that girl-on-girl stomping action—”
“Kevin!”
“Hah? Kevin, what? Who’re you yelling at, white man?”
The drugs, the strain, I didn’t know what was getting him, but he was less organized, wilder, every time we talked. His twelve-hour game clock still gave me five hours, but Kevin might unravel before the clock ran out.
“Kevin,” I said calmly. “Are we playing, or talking movies? Because I don’t give a damn about movies. Why was the pattern different this time?”
“God, you’re boring!” He let out a huge theatrical sigh. “Well, game fans, the reason it was different was, now we’re in overtime.”
“What does that mean?”
“Overtime? See, that’s when there’s a draw at the end of the fourth quarter, so you have to—”
“I know what the fuck overtime is! What are we doing? You and I?”
“ ‘You and I.’ See, not ‘you and me,’ like normal people talk. No, Big Brain knows best! Well, here’s the deal, Big Brain. Even though it’s not overtime, technically, because there’s no draw because I’m way ahead, but even though that, I’m cutting you some slack. But no more running around, finding bodies and clues, all that shit. I’m tired of that. You have almost all the clues you need now to find your girlfriend.”
“I do?”
“In that bag, the one you got from Jasmine. Poor kid. Did she kick and squeal and struggle? I wanna hear about it! What was it like?”
I was silent.
“Oh, poor genius can’t even talk about it? Must’ve hurt, watching her die because of you. Aww. Too fucking bad.”
“Are these clues, Kevin? The stuff in this bag? Or just a way to mess with my head?”
“Your head? I’m supposed to give a shit about your head? No, Big Brain, that bag, what’s in there, you need one more thing to tie it all up. I just call one more time to tell you that one more thing, and then all you gotta do is put it together right.”
“Why call again? Why not tell me right now?”
“That’s for me to know and you to find out. No, seriously, I’ll call you when everything’s ready.”
“Let me speak to Lydia.”
“Not that again! You’re a drag, you know that?”
“I followed the clues. I found the girl.”
“What a whiner. ‘I did what you said, now can I have my reward please?’ Well, you know what? No. She’s fine. She’s right here. But I don’t feel like it. Later for you, asshole.”
“If I don’t speak to her—”
“Oh, don’t start that bullshit again! You’ll keep playing because you love little Kewpie Doll here. You lurrrrve her. Right? Or maybe not. Maybe you’re banging Charlie Chan Junior, and you don’t give a shit about her. Well, it doesn’t matter, because think about this, Prince Asshole: you need her. You need to find her. Because right now the po-lice are thinking you killed four Chinese hos. Cutie Pie here is the only one who knows that ain’t so. Say it ain’t so, Joe! Say it all you want, but until you got a witness—can I get a wit-ness!—you’re just totally fucked. And she’s the only witness you got. So even if you’re like, soooooo over her, you need to keep playing.”
“Kevin—”
“Oh, Kevin this, Kevin that. I’m sick of it. You just be a good little genius and sit there with your thumb up your ass until I call again. Peace.”
After that, nothing. In the silence Lu whistled. “You know? That really is a lunatic. What are you going to do?”
“Let me think!” I yelled. Lu raised his eyebrows at my tone, but he didn’t say anything.
I rubbed a hand down my face. “Check around,” I told him. “See if you’re missing any other girls.”
“He says it’s all about your partner now. No more running around.”
“Yeah, and he’s real big on the truth.”
Lu sat for a moment, as though lost in thought. He called out something in Chinese. The mama-san came instantly into the room. They exchanged a few sentences; she bowed and left.
“Drives me up the wall when she bows,” Lu said conversationally. “Like this was fucking Shanghai or something.”
After that, some moments of quiet, of nothing; then Woof plowed back downstairs and bounced over to me, wagging and pawing. Linus followed more slowly, crimson as Jasmine walked behind him, rubbing his shoulders.
“He good boy,” she told Lu. “Even I say it’s okay, he don’t want, even tiny kiss. Anyway that picture, make me out of the mood.”
“Dude.” Linus strode over, leaving Jasmine pouting, and showed me the results of his work. “She says it’s him.”
“Jasmine?” Lu asked. “That true? This is the guy you went with?” He leaned toward me, to see Kevin: older, thinner, grayer, harder. Jasmine bit her lip and nodded.
“How did you do that?” I asked Linus.
He shrugged. “It’s only a program.” He turned to Lu. “The picture’s on her computer. In case you wanted to send it around. To where the other girls, you know, live.”
“Good thinking, kid.” Lu opened his mouth to call the mama-san. As if reading his mind, she came flying back into the room; but she didn’t give him a chance to speak. She poured forth a stream of agitated Chinese. Lu rose from his chair, spe
aking in short, clipped phrases. He crossed to the window, peeked out. Then came the unmistakeable pounding of police fists on the door.
20
“You son of a bitch,” Lu said to me, but this time more exasperated than murderous. “You brought this on.”
“Or it could have something to do with you running a string of hookers.”
Inside, a bell started tinkling. Galloping commotion erupted on both floors as girls and johns leapt up and threw their clothes on.
From outside, more pounding, then, “Chinatown Vice! Open the damn door!”
Chinatown Vice: that would be Mary’s friend Patino. And possibly Mary, too.
“We’ve got the back covered,” the voice called. “And the roof. So forget it, just open the door.”
The mama-san and Lu exchanged quick words. She protested, he insisted; she threw me a snarl, then she went to the door and screeched in English, “Hey, who making so much noise?”
“Oh, who the hell do you think, Mama Zhu? It’s the police. Open up!”
Teapots and sweets appeared on trays rushed into the parlors by nervous young women. Musical instruments were whipped from cases. Woof joined in the excitement, barking like mad.
“Oh! Police! Okay, just one minute, hold your horses!”
Hookers and johns streamed down the stairs to sit artistically in the parlors as the fists thumped again. “Forget one minute! There’s nowhere to go and I’m getting impatient. Just open the door!”
Nowhere to go: bad for the johns, worse for me. They could try to sell the idea they’d all been sitting around listening to pretty girls sing. I had nothing to sell. I also didn’t think for a minute this raid was a coincidence.
The voice called, “We have the ram, Mama Zhu. Should we use it? Ten, nine . . .”
The mama-san pointed at me, spitting something that was a curse in any language. She turned back to the door. “Hey, police! You have warrant?”
Lu said to me, “Come on.”
“Where? They’re out back, too.”
“Damn tootin’, we have a warrant!” the cop yelled.
“Kid?” said Lu. “You want to come, you want to stay? Do your street cred good, you get picked up in a high-class joint like this.” Lu was grinning, talking over his shoulder, heading down a set of basement steps under the staircase.
Jasmine hurried with him as though this was old hat. “Come on, cute boy!”
Linus stared; being swept up in a whorehouse raid or going down into the dark with Jasmine was not a choice he’d woken this morning expecting to have to make. “Damn, dude.” He shook his head in wonder; then he shoved the new clues back into the orange bag and he and Woof followed. Ming gave me a push, but I didn’t need it. I knew what would happen if the cops picked me up now; I’d take my chances with Lu.
The basement was about what I’d have thought: dim, dusty, mold-scented, scattered with old furniture and low-ceilinged with pipes. We followed Lu through it, feeling the chaotic pounding of cop feet overhead. Lu strode on with purpose and without panic, around hot water heaters and past the giant mound of an oil tank. In a dark corner of a far wall he moved aside a rusting bedspring to reveal a door.
“You have a priest hole down here big enough for all of us? And the dog?”
“What the fuck is a priest hole?” Lu asked, ducking through the low opening.
I was about to come back with something brilliant—“A hiding place, jackass” was on my mind—but when I followed Lu, Linus, and Woof through the doorway I didn’t find the abandoned coal bin I was expecting. Or the wall separating Lu’s building from the building next door, either. I could barely see Woof’s wagging tail up ahead as he vanished with Lu and Linus down a tunnel. I moved along and Ming climbed in behind me. Strawman crowded in, and Jasmine shut the door on us with a cheery “Bye-bye!”
The rough-walled tunnel wasn’t quite high enough to stand up in. Lu, in front, and Strawman in the rear danced penlights through the darkness. I glanced back and got a cold kick out of Ming and Strawman, who were stuffed in the passageway like ten pounds of trash in a nine pound bag.
“Where the hell are we?” I asked, crouching along as the tunnel bent, turned, and headed down. I was surprised to hear the answer come not from Lu, but from Linus.
“It’s the Chinatown tunnels! Mr. Lu, dude, am I right?”
“You’re right, kid.”
“Oh, awesome! Dig, I always thought these were made up! They’re real?”
“You’re in one. One of the reasons I bought that building.”
“What about Jasmine?” I said. “How’s she going to explain popping up out of the basement?”
“She doesn’t pop up. She hides there until they find her and then just looks embarrassed. They haul her out like she’s a find, search the basement for more girls, and that’s that. You’re just lucky all my girls have papers.”
“They’re all legal?”
“No, they just all have papers.”
Suddenly Lu stopped, played his light on a surface in front of him. We all barely avoided piling into each other. Lu pulled out a jangling keyring, scraped it into a steel door. The thunk of a bolt, the creak of hinges, and he stepped forward, the rest of us close behind. The walls and ceiling fell away into a space dank and lightless but obviously much bigger than the cramped tube we’d been in.
“Oh, awesome!” Linus breathed, stopping, trying to see around him. “Tell me it’s the opera house.”
“Hey, kid, not bad. You know your history.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know it was history! I thought it was fairy tales.”
Lu played his light over an underbrush of benches and toppled stools. A low platform stood against one wall. Lu walked forward. “Watch your step here,” he said. “There’s still junk around.”
We picked our way through dusty wreckage that rolled or cracked or clanged when you kicked it. I caught up with Linus and asked him what the story was.
“All the old men tell you. Different tongs and gangs, back in the day. No one liked to be trapped anywhere. They dug tunnels under every place. But they got filled in, mostly. Or some, they were never there.”
“And this? The opera house?”
“They put it down here because no one could afford this much space on the street. You know, where you could put stores. Dig, dude, they had a gang war down here one time! Big ambush, guys shooting each other up while the people were singing. Cops came in the front door maybe two minutes later. Upstairs, I mean, the real door. No one went out that way but no one was here when they got here except the bodies! Everyone, the actors, the whole audience, even the ones not in the war, they all ran out through their own tong’s tunnels!” He added matter-of-factly, “But then the CCBA built their building, with the auditorium, and everyone stopped using this down here.”
“Except me,” Lu said, unlocking another door at the far end of the space. Brightness briefly dazzled, though the small corridor we stepped into was, in truth, lit only by a single fluorescent strip.
The corridor led nowhere but to a flight of stairs, so we climbed. Ming and Strawman seemed to know just what they were doing. I guessed they’d been around for a police raid or two before. At the top of the three flights, Lu pulled open another door, and there we were in a Chinatown commercial corridor, standing among barbershops and noodle shops, jewelry stores and junk stores.
“So.” Lu grinned. “Not bad, huh?”
“Terrific,” I said. “Thanks, Lu. See you around.”
“In your goddamn dreams. Where the hell are you going to go?”
“Not your problem.”
“Wrong. Last thing you’re going to do is catch that lunatic without me.”
“I told you. When I find him, you can have him. After he gives me Lydia back.”
“I hate to say this, because I hate to sound like your lunatic, but I don’t trust you. You could turn him over to the cops to help you kiss and make up with them. Or you could kill him yourself. No, my friend, whate
ver you do between now and then, Ming will be right there to help.”
“I don’t want him.”
“Did I ask you?”
Breaking into this standoff, a familiar melody, and an “Oh, shit,” from Linus. “Bad Boys,” Mary’s ringtone. “Dude? What do I do?”
I nodded, eyes still on Lu. “Answer it.”
Linus frowned, and Lu did, too, but I wanted to know if I had, really, been the point of the raid on Lu’s crib.
“Hey, Aunt Mary,” Linus said, sounding less chipper than the last time he’d talked to her. “Uh . . . Um . . .” He covered the phone. “She wants to know if you’re here.”
“Tell her no. Give her the number of one of the new phones.”
He dug one from his cargo pocket, gave her the number, listened, winced, said, “Yeah, ’k, well, gotta go,” and clicked off.
Lu said, “What are you doing? Who the hell was that?”
Linus told him, “A cop.”
“In the middle of this shit you’re—”
I batted Ming’s hand away when the new phone rang. I lifted it, said, “Mary?”
Lu held a palm up and Ming backed off.
“Where the hell are you?” Mary asked fiercely. “And is Linus with you, or why did he cover the phone?”
“He was here, gone now. I told him to split. I’m in Chinatown. I’m telling you that because I know you can trace this call to a Chinatown tower. But that’s all I’m saying and by the time you get here I’ll be gone, too.”
“How did you get out of Lu’s?”
“How did you know I was at Lu’s?”
“Chinatown telegraph.”
“What?”
“I wasn’t thinking Lu’s, because I didn’t know you were pals. Last I heard he wanted to kill you. But I thought you might turn up here someplace, trying to track Lydia. I asked the old ladies, if they saw you, to tell me.”
“They know me?”
“Lydia’s partner? Chinatown’s only PI, with a non-Chinese partner her mom doesn’t like? You’re kidding.” Her tone shifted, got low, insistent. “Bill, you have to come in.”
“No.”
“This is police business now.”