“It’s my car,” Joy muttered.
“Otherwise, me and Ed will find another way. Won’t we, Ed? I don’t care if we walk. I like walkin’.”
With a great sigh, Perla put down her paper napkin. “I think this dream stuff is a waste of time.” The others all looked at her until she looked down with a sour twist to her mouth. “But Joy’s right; it is her car. If she wants to go...”
Ed suppressed a smile; he had expected more of an argument from her. Joy went out to gather up Buns; she spoke quietly into his ear, probably apologizing for making him wait outside. Leaving some money on the table, Ed followed the others out to the van.
* * *
After the four strange people departed, the waitress picked up one of their coffee cups and found a hundred dollar bill on the table. She picked it up and held it up to the light, suspicious, but it appeared to be genuine. Tucking it into her pocket, she turned around in a daze and bumped right into the man who had been watching the four strange people from his seat at the counter. He was quite possibly the largest person she’d ever seen; his enormous leather jacket must have required the sacrifice of half a dozen cows.
“I’m sorry,” the big man said, tipping his wide-brimmed hat. A tattoo of a half-naked woman peeked out of his sleeve. “May Lord Orc bless you.”
“Erm,” replied the waitress. She watched him as he went outside and got into an old brown sedan at the far end of the parking lot, wondering what the heck he had meant by that. The kooky characters seemed to be crawling out of the woodwork today. She went back to her work, marveling at her newly-earned hundred dollars as the lunchtime crowd started to clear out.
44
Oxtail Soup
The old apartment seemed smaller than ever to Danny. Probably, he decided, because there had hardly ever been so many people in it. The smell of hot soup and cooking vegetables made his mouth water, and he could hear the sharp sizzle from the kitchen as his mother dropped some meat into the wok.
He checked the clock. She would be arriving any minute. His stomach tried to twist itself into a knot; he took a deep breath to steady his nerves.
“Look at any more houses this week?” asked Ching, who sat in one of the folding chairs they brought out when they had company over. Alice sat precariously on his lap, and the two of them giggled like a couple of little kids every time the chair wobbled and nearly dumped both of them on the floor.
Danny glanced at the Chinese newspaper on the table, open to the real estate pages. “One place, up in Westchester,” he said. “Ma thought it was too small. She wants nine foot ceilings.”
Alice laughed again. “I don’t see why she cares. She’s not even five feet tall.” Her black eye was starting to heal. It had turned a nasty shade of purple, but she said it didn’t hurt anymore. She was gaining some of her weight back, too, thanks to the round-the-clock cooking their mother had been doing since Alice’s return.
Danny moved the real estate section aside. Beneath it was last Sunday’s front page with its huge headline in Chinese script. PROSTITUTION RING BROKEN, it read. Underneath, in smaller text, it said: CRIME BOSS SHOT DEAD.
Danny had read the article a dozen times, and it never grew any less satisfying. The article told of the ignominious end of Mr. Li, shot to death by unknown attackers in a bathroom in his own brothel. The assailant had never been identified, but the journalist’s presumption was that the murder had been carried out by a rival gangster, of whom there were several. Some patrons of Li’s establishment had been arrested as well, including two prominent figures in the city government who would not be running for reelection in 1970.
The other story, buried on page five, had almost escaped his notice. This story, told with much less flair, told about another crime ring that had been uncovered by the police. More than a million dollars’ worth of jewels and other valuables, stolen from some of the largest Chinese importers, had been recovered, and several minor players in the crime were awaiting arraignment. Two such gentlemen named in the article, Chiu and Ho, were familiar names to Danny. But in this case, the boss remained unknown and at large.
These two news items would have brought Danny great relief, if it were not for his all-consuming dread of seeing Lizzie again. He had not been in contact with her since Alice had come back. His conscience had been nagging him ceaselessly, and he had come to realize that he couldn’t keep it from her any longer. He had to tell her, even if she would end up hating him for it.
“If it’s got high ceilings, does that mean it’ll have wide doorways, too?” said Fu. He was seated opposite Danny in the only chair that could hold him. Ever since Wang had sent him to serve as Mrs. Chan’s bodyguard, he had made himself at home in the tiny apartment, but it was becoming increasingly evident that he felt confined in the cramped space. Mrs. Chan treated him like a son and fed him almost as much as she fed Alice.
Fu was overjoyed at Alice’s safe return, and his round face broke into a wide smile every time he looked at her and Ching together. Danny was reminded of the precious old Buddha his mother had kept on the shelf in their old shop. Now she had her Buddha back, but this one was a better Buddha that could scare away intruders.
There was a soft knock on the door. Fu rolled out of the armchair and went over to look through the peephole.
“White girl,” he announced.
Danny nodded, his stomach doing gymnastics once again, and Fu opened the door. Lizzie was standing in the hallway, looking around uncertainly. She smiled when she saw Danny and gazed up at Fu in wonder as she squeezed past him into the apartment.
There were introductions—Danny couldn’t help but laugh as Lizzie struggled to pronounce everyone’s name—and then they sat down to eat. His mother brought out steaming bowls of soup and set them on the folding table. Everyone pulled up their chairs and crowded around the little table except Fu, who returned to his armchair and sipped broth straight from his bowl. It looked like a teacup in his hands. Danny sat on the sofa, a good foot lower than everyone else on their folding chairs.
Lizzie peered into her bowl and sniffed the steam rising from it. Tentatively, she scooped up a piece of oxtail with her spoon and examined it closely.
“Yam tong!” Danny’s mother said to Lizzie, miming the act of eating with a spoon. She snatched up her own piece of meat with a pair of chopsticks and gnawed ferociously at it.
“It’s not going to bite you,” Danny said, raising a spoonful of broth to his lips. “It’s just beef.”
“Okay.” Lizzie attempted to nibble at the meat, but it slipped off her spoon and fell back into her bowl with a splash. Ching, sitting too close, yelped as he was spattered with hot broth. Clearly trying hard not to sound squeamish, Lizzie asked, “What part of the beef is it?”
“It’s the wee-wee!” Alice exclaimed gleefully. “Give you stamina.” Ching turned bright red and hid his face in his hands.
Danny inhaled a mouthful of broth and began coughing violently, broth dribbling down his chin. Ching went to the kitchen and returned with a roll of paper towel, tearing off a piece for each of them.
“Don’t listen to her,” Danny said once he was able to speak again. “It’s just oxtail. We only serve the bull’s penis on Chinese holidays.” Alice dropped her spoon and erupted into an uncontrollable fit of laughter, slapping the table with her hand, while their mother gave her and Danny a disapproving frown. Fu grinned broadly as he gulped down the last of his broth and then picked up his piece of oxtail with his fingers.
Cautiously, Lizzie picked up her meat again and bit off a piece. Then she smiled at Danny’s mother, who beamed back at her before returning to the kitchen. Alice, having finished her soup quickly, got up to help her clear the soup bowls. They soon emerged from the kitchen carrying a bowl of steaming rice in each hand. The main course was a slab of fish in a starchy brown sauce, and there was also a heaping platter of Chinese broccoli and a large bowl of snails in their shells. Lizzie took a small piece of fish for herself, but Danny’s mother click
ed her tongue and scooped a much larger piece into her bowl. When Lizzie had some trouble getting the rice out of her bowl with her chopsticks, Mrs. Chan demonstrated her own technique: balancing her bowl on her fingers and raising it to her mouth, she scooped the rice toward her mouth with her chopsticks and slurped noisily until not a speck of food remained. Lizzie imitated her, spilling only a few grains of rice in the process. Danny and Alice broke into spontaneous applause, and Lizzie took a small bow.
Dinner was over too quickly. Alice and Ching moved over to the couch and sat there together, gazing at each other with puppy-dog eyes. Fu went to the kitchen to help clean up. This left only Danny and Lizzie.
“Take a walk?” Lizzie asked. Danny wanted desperately to decline, but could think of no good excuses. He had to tell her; his conscience wouldn’t leave him alone until he did.
They went downstairs and walked in silence up Mulberry to Canal Street. It was a humid evening, and he found himself sweating much more than he was accustomed to. They walked past the playground, where the beardless face of Blake looked down at them from high above, barely visible in the fading light. When Lizzie spoke, what she said caught him completely off guard.
“When do you have to leave? For the Army?”
“How do you know?” The letter. She had to have seen the letter. “I—well, I’m not going.”
She gave him a stern look. “You’re not planning to skip out?”
“I got out of it.” He took a deep breath and let it out in a long sigh. “I made a deal.”
“With who?”
“With Driscoll.” There, he’d said it. No turning back now.
Lizzie stopped walking and gaped at him. “Danny, you’d better be shitting me.”
“I’m not.” It was incredibly difficult to look her in the eye, but he made himself do it anyway. “He’s the one who got Alice out. And he solved my draft problem. My family’s safe now. But―”
“Driscoll did all that for you?” Her voice was little more than a whisper.
Danny nodded.
“And what exactly did you do for him?”
He took in a long, shuddering breath and said, “Lizzie, I’m so sorry.”
“What did you do?”
“I gave them information. They wanted to know where to find your friend. Ed.” He had to make himself say the name. Until now, he had managed to pretend that Ed was not really a person; he was just a name. A person only in the abstract.
Lizzie shook her head. “He’s tricking you. They already have Ed.”
“They don’t. He got away. They’ve been trying to track him down. That’s why Driscoll’s been following you. He thought Ed might come to you.”
“Ed doesn’t know where I am.” The shock on her face began to melt away, replaced by something more dangerous. “And I don’t know where he is, either. What did you tell Driscoll?” Her eyes bored into Danny like two lasers.
Danny found he couldn’t look her in the eye anymore. He dropped his gaze and said, “I gave him the map.”
“The map,” she repeated dully. “Nobody touched the map. It’s still there.”
“I don’t know, they must’ve taken pictures. Driscoll said―”
“Driscoll was in my apartment?”
“I―”
He lost his train of thought as Lizzie slapped him across the face. Then she slapped him again, harder.
“Lizzie―”
“How long have you known he escaped?”
Danny rubbed his jaw. “Not long. A little more than a week.”
“When we talked about it—when you said—you already knew by then, didn’t you?”
He nodded.
There were tears in her eyes now, and an expression of mingled pain and fury on her face. However skeptical he had been until now, Danny no longer doubted that this tiny girl could have killed an FBI agent.
“So you sold Ed to save your sister,” she said coldly. “And yourself. Was it worth it, do you think?”
“Lizzie, I―”
“Don’t call me that. It’s not my name.”
“I don’t know what to say. I got desperate. They were going to kill her.”
Lizzie—or whoever she was—put her hands on her hips. “And what do you think they’ll do to Ed when they catch him again?”
Danny wanted to ask her if what Driscoll had said was true—whether Terwilliger had done the things Driscoll had accused him of. “I’m sorry,” was all he could think to say.
Tears leaked out of Lizzie’s eyes and ran down her cheeks. She wiped them away angrily. “Go home, Danny,” she said in a cracking voice. “Just fuck off and go home.” She turned around and started walking briskly away.
Danny stood there and watched her go. But then another thought came to his mind.
“Wait.” He started to walk after her. She walked faster. “Lizzie, there’s something else.”
“Leave me alone!”
“I think there might still be a way to help him.”
She stopped, but didn’t turn around. He caught up to her, staying several steps back.
“There was something Driscoll said, when he told me about the map. I think we can figure out where that city is.”
“I already tried that.”
“‘Up there,’ he said. He’s sending agents ‘up there’ to look for Ed. I think it’s someplace north of here.”
“What’s north of here? Boston? I already know it’s not Boston.”
Danny took another step closer. “Someplace in Canada, maybe. It sounded that way. Driscoll’s people didn’t take long to figure it out. If they can do it, we can do it.”
Lizzie spun around to face him. “Don’t mess with me. If you think you can find him, then do it! But if anything happens to him, if they get him again...” She jabbed her finger painfully into his chest. “I’ll kill you.”
Danny believed it.
45
Terwilliger’s City
Ed was pretty sure he’d gone to the wrong place.
Rain poured out of the dark sky, drenching Toronto and soaking the Canadians who scurried past him on the sidewalk. It was barely five o’clock, but the dull gray light made it seem much later. Ed walked morosely down Bay Street, watching the cars go by. The rain was seeping through his new jacket and into his shirt, but there hardly seemed a point to seeking shelter. As if to underscore the point, a bus drove through a puddle by the curb, dousing him with a sheet of dirty water.
Two weeks ago it had all seemed so clear: this was where he was supposed to go. Joy had been certain of it, absolutely certain. Now that he was here, it all seemed wrong. The others were back at the hotel, staying inside to avoid the rain. They were all looking to him for guidance. Rayfield, especially, was eager to see what Ed would do now that they had reached their destination. Ed hadn’t admitted it to any of them, but he had no idea.
He walked past a large Gothic building, all stone arches and spires, and through a park where the trees provided a little shelter from the downpour. He waited there for the rain to subside a bit.
“So, what now?” Perla had asked on the morning after they had arrived and checked into two rooms in the hotel. Ed’s cash supply was still plentiful, so they had chosen a nice place—but not too nice—within walking distance from the heart of the city. In Los Angeles, a hotel like that would have cost three times as much. Here, he had no idea what it was costing him; he’d lost track of the conversion rate. No dogs were allowed, but Joy had snuck Buns into the room she shared with Perla. The near-constant barking of the silly little dog had kept Ed up at night, and he was tired and irritable.
“Give him a little time, Perla,” Joy had said. “He’ll figure it out.”
A week had gone by. Then another. Ed had taken to wandering the streets, not so much because he thought he’d discover something, but because he was increasingly eager to get away from Perla and her crippling cynicism. After two weeks, even Joy had started to become less enthusiastic in her defense of him. Only Rayfield
still seemed convinced that Ed would figure out what he was supposed to do here. But Rayfield was also convinced that Louis and Geoffrey were still alive, and that Rat had been simply misunderstood. As much as he liked Rayfield, Ed didn’t put much stock in what Rayfield thought of things.
The raindrops slowed a little, or he imagined that they did. He started walking again. His destination this evening was the library at the University, where he hoped to find some useful information about this miserable city. He could think of nothing else to do.
Maybe it was the rain, or perhaps he was too lost in his own thoughts to spot the street he wanted. He somehow went past it and got himself lost. Realizing that he didn’t know where he was, Ed cursed under his breath and looked around, trying to get his bearings. People were walking past on their way home from work, hiding beneath their big black umbrellas, but he was in no mood to start asking directions. He didn’t want to speak to anyone. Instead he picked a street at random and turned left, toward where he thought the university was, intending to work his way back to familiar territory. He passed a museum and then saw something that made him stop in his tracks, causing a particularly angry-looking man to collide with him. The man grumbled something that didn’t sound like an apology as he walked around Ed in annoyance.
A huge promotional poster, eight feet tall, hung on the wall near the entry to the university stadium. On the poster, to Ed’s amazement, was a picture of the boy from his dream, the boy who had spoken to him in the dark place with the lights. There was no mistaking him. Ed took several steps backward to see it better, interrupting the flow of the crowd around him. Several more people grumbled at him for getting in their way. He barely noticed.
From the edge of the street he could see the whole poster, and now he realized that the picture showed not a boy, but a full-grown Jim Morrison. Yet, if he half-closed his eyes, he could tell that Morrison and the boy must be one and the same. Colorful, ornate letters at the top proclaimed a concert, the Rock n’ Roll Revival, where the Doors would be the headline act.
Forest of the Mind (The Book of Terwilliger 1) Page 43