One for Our Baby

by John Sandrolini

  I dropped the sleeper’s arm to the floor and took a deep breath, running my hands over my face and back through my hair. Down at the far end of the ramp, the sound of the big freighters firing up for their long-haul runs rumbled through the air.

  “What’s this all about, Joe? This fellow isn’t dressed like some common thief.”

  “He’s not. He’s Ching Hwa.”

  “Uh-ohhh.”

  “Yeah. Check him for weapons; we’re going to be asking him some questions when he comes around.”

  Roscoe propped the small man up against the hangar door while I walked over to the office to retrieve my gun and the Old Overholt. When I returned, he’d amassed a collection of two throwing stars like the one stuck into my recliner, a nasty little curved knife, and a garrote, all spread out behind him on the hangar floor. Probably not the arsenal you’d take out for a night at the movies, but standard issue for the Hwas.

  “Goddamn, this little man is armed to the teeth!” Roscoe said as I neared. “I thought your troubles with these guys were all settled.”

  “So did I. Here, take a drink,” I said, handing him the bottle of rye. “We might be here awhile.”

  I seldom involved Roscoe in my affairs since he had a wife and two children at home, but this time the affairs had invaded our hangar and he’d just coldcocked one of the goons, so his ticket to the rodeo was already punched.

  I looked down into the face of the Chinese thug and slapped him twice. His head lolled from side to side a few times, then he looked up toward me slowly through vitreous eyes. I grabbed his bruised cheeks in my hand hard enough to make him wince, then spoke to him in broken Cantonese.

  “What are you doing here?”

  He eyed me with surprise but didn’t speak. I pulled the .45 out and cocked it, laying the barrel alongside his nose. I stared into his widening eyes for several seconds, long enough to know that he wasn’t a hard case.

  I pushed the muzzle against his eye socket, drove it in. “You’ve heard enough about me to know you won’t be the first Ching Hwa I’ve killed—or the last. What do you want with me now?”

  “The film,” he said in English, his voice a sliver. “We want the film.”

  “Film?” I asked, looking back toward Roscoe for confirmation.

  That was a mistake.

  His hand shot out and pushed the gun away, and then a foot struck me in the chest with a snap-kick, knocking me backward into Roscoe. We both tried to lunge for him but blocked each other, and he slipped away through the door, slamming it behind him.

  “Stay here, Roscoe,” I said as I reached for the handle. “They might be back.”

  I yanked the door open and tore after the assailant as he ran wildly across the flightline. He was fifty feet ahead of me, but I knew the layout. Darting left and right like a wild rabbit, he ran down the taxiways looking for an exit, with me gaining a step on him every time he reversed field. I knew there was no opening without a fence to scale, and I’d have him easy if he tried that.

  It was dark, but the lights of a half-dozen DC-6s warming up their engines at McBride Worldwide seemed to draw him as if he were a moth, and he headed toward their gathered masses near runway 7 Right, with me just thirty feet behind and charging hard.

  I had no idea what the Ching Hwas wanted with me now—I sure as hell didn’t have any film—but with this guy in tow I could call for a sit-down to straighten the whole thing out. Otherwise, the Hwas would just deny it all and pull some of that inscrutable bullshit. I just couldn’t let their man get away.

  Ahead of me, the Chinaman rounded an opening in a cyclone fence and broke right, into the field of parked transports that rose in the dark. I vaulted the low fence as he ran underneath one of the planes, made a half turn, and scurried forward toward the next. I only needed another ten seconds to catch him.

  The plane ahead had been idling its engines for warm-up before taxiing out. Just then, the pilot brought the propellers to high speed for taxi, their arcs spinning almost invisibly in the dark, the blue wicks of fire licking back along the exhaust pipes from each of the four engines. I was just a few feet behind him as I saw it unfolding.

  “Look out!” I shouted at the top of my lungs, but my warning was lost in the bellow of the 2,500-horsepower engines.

  The Hwa cut too close to the exhaust flames, throwing his hands up to ward off the unexpected searing heat. He covered up then spun around, and I watched, aghast, as he sidestepped into the whirring blades.

  For a second, it looked like he’d lived the myth of walking through unscathed. Then he simply sheared diagonally into two distinct pieces, a scarlet fountain erupting from his body and vaporizing in a whirling cloud around the propeller.

  His head and arms fell straight down to the ramp, but the rest of him kept walking. I stopped cold, transfixed with horror as I watched his legs and lower torso stagger forward several steps before collapsing.

  Grasping the trailing edge of the flaps for support, I fought off the shock wave of sickness that washed over me. My face felt strangely damp. Then I tasted something warm and salty on my lips.

  Even in the dark, I knew it wasn’t sweat.

  The engines were already retreating as the pilots realized what had happened, but there was nothing to be done for the little guy now. It was horribly gruesome, but almost everyone who flew off carriers saw it at least once.

  I took stock of my situation as I stood there: I was within twenty feet of a freshly bisected man, and I was bathed in his blood. Any basic investigation by the police would determine that he was a Chinese mobster, and that I had a long history in his country.

  It was no good.

  I wanted to tell the pilots it wasn’t their fault, but that would have to wait. Getting as far from that asphalt killing floor as fast as I could was my only move. Turning from the corpse, I ducked away and fled, weaving beneath the other aircraft as voices called out behind me that someone was down.

  I stole away swiftly across the darkened tarmac, blood stinging my eyes as I ran.

  27

  I made the hangar in two minutes, slamming the door shut behind me as I rushed in. Roscoe was inside, policing up my mess. He looked me up and down as I approached. Anyone else would have burst out screaming or asking if I was all right. Roscoe didn’t faze.

  “You’re covered in blood, Buonomo.”

  “Yeah.”

  “And you’re getting it on my hangar floor.”

  I looked down. “Yeah.”

  “So get your ass in the shower and give me those clothes. I’m going to burn them.”

  “But it’s a Saville Row suit, from Frank.”

  “Have his tailor make you another one—they can send it to San Quentin. Now give me the goddamn suit, Joe!”

  I gave him the goddamn suit and jumped into the work shower. When I got out, he was gone. A shirt and a pair of slacks from my locker were on the chair close by, along with a note that read, Call me if you need me. Be in tomorrow night. R.M.

  I had only one option. Things were spinning way out of control. I’d gone from looking for a missing girl to colliding with the mob in Vegas to running a member of L.A.’s most notorious Chinese crime clan through a blender.

  I needed help. I needed a friend. I needed Sam Woo.

  28

  The cool night air flowed over me as I cruised north toward L.A., the gray Long Beach freeway playing out in front of the nose of my LeSabre like a storm-studded horizon. I hadn’t bothered to make a phone call. Sam would be in. He was always in.

  Sam Woo and I went back to 1942. He was a member of the Chinese resistance who rescued me after I’d been shot down over Japanese-held Nanking. Later, we battled the Communists in service to Chiang Kai-shek, all the way to the disastrous end. Then, in Taiwan, we fell into some rather lucrative business together in our own enterprise. Things like that tend to build a bond between guys—and Sam Woo was a guy you wanted a bond with when the Ching Hwas were your enemy.

  His name wasn’t a
ctually Sam Woo—Chinese for “Three Harmonies”—that was the name of his restaurant, but everybody, even the locals, knew him that way. Sam had continued the activities we began together while in exile, moving on to the States after I left for the Caribbean. And he had done spectacularly well in my absence.

  Sam didn’t command the street gangs, drug peddlers, and heist mobs that slithered through nocturnal Los Angeles, but he was so well connected to so many people, with so much muscle at his disposal, that no one did anything in Chinatown without getting his okay.

  In China, he’d been a warlord. In America, they called him a kingpin.

  * * *

  It was past two when I arrived. I pulled short, made a U-turn, and pointed the car toward the West Gate for a speedy exit. You just never know.

  SAM WOO blazed in red neon letters against a green background as I approached the restaurant. A gaggle of ducks hung by their necks in the window, their roasted brown bodies dripping grease into catch pans below.

  I peered through the glass door for a second, then pushed it open, locking on the half-masted eyes of Lo Chi through the kitchen porthole. He leaned halfway out, yawning, a clutch of feathers in one hand and a dead bird in the other. I gave a faint head nod toward the back, and then he disappeared silently through the swinging door behind him. Mama Chu gave me a seat at a table along the far wall then brought me some tea. I poured a cup and looked around the room.

  Two elderly men with white beards sat quietly near the window playing mah-jongg and sipping tea. Closer to the door, two young toughs with furtive eyes spoke in dialect beneath their breath, the occasional angry glance cutting the air. From the looks they were telegraphing, they either didn’t know Sam or they didn’t know me. Since I was the only person in the room who wasn’t Chinese, I figured the stare-down was definitely all mine.

  I ignored them both. Predictably, this only incited them. Vague curses about white devils and the chosen profession of my mother flew across the room. Mama Chu told them to behave.

  The old men kept to their game. I sipped my tea. The minutes crept.

  I don’t know, maybe it’s my face. There must be something about me that invites this shit. Finally, one of them got bold, stood up, and advanced toward my table, accusing me of committing immoral acts with a dog, or maybe a pig’s head. I couldn’t be sure which—my Chinese wasn’t that good anymore.

  It had been a long day, and I was tired of beating up Moo Shu Cagneys, but this was a threat.

  I put down my tea.

  Mama Chu stepped behind the counter and the old men looked up. I steeled my guts and put my fiercest stare on the lead guy. His eyes dilated with fear, but he wouldn’t meet my glare, looking beyond me instead. Then he shrank visibly and bowed low, his partner doing the same. Even on my best day I wasn’t that tough. Leaning back, I glanced sideways in the direction of the thug’s genuflections.

  Fire burned hot in two dark eyes set deep in an iron face. From the recess of an open door, Sam Woo stood beaming molten fury across the room, his narrow mouth turned down, his body rigid.

  Shot through with terror, the young men spouted multiple apologies, bowed repeatedly, and then fled from the restaurant. Sam never said a word.

  When they were gone, a small smile cracked beneath a steel-gray mustache. “Can’t you go anywhere without busting up the joint, Joe?”

  “Don’t blame me, it was your tea they were bitching about.”

  He shook his head, pointed toward the back room. I followed him in. Two guards started to frisk me as I entered, but Sam waved them away with a flick of his hand. One of them dared to give him a surprised look.

  A torrent of furious words tore from Sam’s mouth in a dialect I couldn’t cipher. As he spoke, he rat-a-tatted his finger against a large glass frame on the wall. It contained a Flying Tigers leather jacket along with the “blood chit” that American Volunteer Group pilots had been instructed to show Chinese locals if they were shot down.

  It was mine.

  I’d given it to Sam as a gesture of thanks after he’d helped hide me, and he’d prized it all these years. A curious bit of hero worship from a godfather, but Sam and I had gone through a few walls for each other in the late ’40s.

  Anyhow, it was a trump of a talisman to have in a place like that. Both guards and two other men left the room quietly as Sam finished his tirade with a pointed “you sons of whores!”

  The door closed behind them with a dismissive click.

  “You get any of that?” he asked in heavily accented English, his face drawn up in a mischievous smirk.

  “Yeah. The sons of whores part.”

  We took seats across from each other at an old mahogany table inscribed with Chinese characters and adorned with red tassels at each corner. Sam lit an elaborately carved ivory pipe and drew in some smoke.

  “What brings you to my world, old friend? You didn’t come in at this hour for the slippery shrimp.”

  “No.”

  He saw the look in my eyes and sat back against the padded back of the bench. “You got trouble?’

  I zippoed a cigarette, sucked in some smoke. “Like Custer.”

  He scrunched up his face, wrinkles binding as he searched for the reference, but he got the point just the same. “Bad, huh?”

  I nodded.

  “Somebody dead?”

  “Yeah. A Ching Hwa.”

  His face fell. “Oh shit. What is it with you and those guys?”

  “I don’t know, Sam. I made a clean break from them in Taiwan. They dragged me back once for that little dustup in Macao, but that was my last tea ceremony with them. It’s all over, finito, zai jian, baby, and goodnight.”

  He exhaled sharply through his nostrils, his eyes contracting until they were just slits in the mask of his face. He said nothing for quite a while, contemplating the complexity of the machinations that would surely follow now.

  “Tell me,” he said finally.

  “Two guys. They broke into my hangar tonight. I don’t think they expected me to be there, but they sure as hell tried to wipe the floor with me just the same,” I said, rubbing my sore neck at the memory.

  “Go on.”

  “We reenacted the Boxer Rebellion—you guys lost again. One got away, but Roscoe came in and flattened the other.”

  “He would appear to have a talent for that.”

  “Yeah, I’ve seen it before. Anyway, I slapped the guy around a little and he said they were looking for a film. I have no idea what he was talking about. You got anything on it?”

  He just shook his head and pulled down the edges of his long mustache with his fingers. “Take me to the dead part, Joe.”

  “Well, he broke away from me and took off down the ramp. I chased him because I wanted more answers. I’ve made my peace with the Hwas—they’ve got no cause to be hounding me again.”

  “They didn’t.”

  “Right. Well, the guy ran under some parked planes warming up. He never knew what hit him—right through the blades—I couldn’t stop him. It was an awful mess.”

  “I imagine so,” he replied, puffing out a curl of pungent smoke.

  “That takes me to here. They’re going to blame me, of course.”

  “Of course.”

  I ground my palms together. “Sam, I can’t afford another war with them. They’re not too bright, but they outnumber me about two hundred to one. Besides, I’m in another deal up to my neck.”

  “Which is?”

  “I’m looking for a missing girl. Unrelated.”

  “You sure?”

  I thought a second about the scene at the laundry in the afternoon, then asked, “Do the Ching Hwas run a laundry over on Gower and Sunset?”

  He closed his eyes a moment, then opened them again while nodding his head down twice.

  I swallowed hard. “Do they move heroin out of there?”

  He paused, and then replied, “Yes,” with a gravity that fell like a boxcar of pig iron upon the room.

  “Sam,
” I said, “I’ve got a real problem here.”

  * * *

  I told him what I knew. It was a tough decision to bring Frank’s name into it, but Sam would have known soon enough anyway. He said he’d take care of things, but reminded me that the Ching Hwas were getting bigger and more difficult to control. I didn’t find that terribly reassuring.

  I thanked Sam for his help and bowed to him. To my surprise, he stuck out his hand, a first. I took it and held it tight, feeling the strength still in his grip.

  “Careful, Sam, you’re becoming more American.”

  “And you, my friend, want to be a little less Chinese, but we must all follow the paths we have chosen for ourselves.”

  I grinned as his words sank in, recalling his wisdom, his hypnotic power over men, our friendship forged in fire. Remembering what was best from a very dark time.

  “Thank you, Sam. Goodnight.”

  Sam’s steel eyes met mine, perhaps a trace of sadness in them. “Goodnight, old friend.”

  I turned and walked through the door. On my way out, I said goodnight to Mama Chu and waved at Lo Chi, then nodded to the old men. They barely looked up from their game.

  I went outside and headed down the street toward my car. A man was leaning on the driver’s door smoking a cigarette, watching me as I approached.

  I kept walking, closing the distance, while he sat there flicking ash on my seats. It was one of the toughs from Sam’s, apparently not smart enough to take the warning to heart. Not a Ching Hwa or a mobster, just a dumb kid heading down the wrong path in life.

  I heard the scrape of a heel behind me as I passed the darkened alley twenty feet from the car. That was his wingman, coming up behind me for the squeeze play.

  Number One Wiseass smiled at me as I neared, said, “You in the wrong part of town, buddy,” then flicked the cigarette into my car.

  That did it. I was just all done with Fuck with Joe Buonomo Day.

  “Nuts to you,” I said, swinging my fist up and out. I caught him flat-footed, plastering him with the blind left hook that nobody ever expects.