by Curt Colbert
Having gotten that out of the way, Jewell held up his sketch of the laundry symbol he’d seen at the morgue that morning. “You know this mark?”
The boy leaned forward and squinted. His bone structure was finer than that of most Chinamen. His features were different too; not as flat as those of most Chinese, with a pointed chin. His hair, shorn at the sides and front, like that of most of the Chinese Jewell had seen, was glossy black and tightly wound into a long braid that ran down his back and out of sight. The youth’s clothes were an odd mix of East and West. He wore gray woolen trousers and a black silk, Oriental-cut shirt. No customary black cloth slippers on his feet, though. Heavy, square-toed brogans completed his wardrobe.
The youth straightened up with a jerk, recognition crossing his baby face. Mouth hanging open, head shaking in the negative, he backed away from the long wooden counter that separated them.
“What’s the matter?”
The boy shrugged. “No see that mark before.”
“Have you a mark ledger?”
Another head-shake. “Keep all marks here.” He tapped the side of his head. “Nothing written down. We busy. No time flip through big book.”
“I’ll need to satisfy myself as to that,” Jewell said, making his way to the end of the long counter.
The youth blocked his path. “We no have book!” he repeated, voice rising into a near squeak. “Louie Chong no like customer behind counter! Him beat Louie Gon for letting you back here!”
“And what do you think the Treasury Man will do if you don’t?” Appalled at the regrettable necessity of using strong-arm tactics with a member of the community he was trying to help, Jewell continued, “Now stand aside and allow me to have a look around, short-leg.”
The boy turned and fled. Before Jewell could react, he had flung open a cupboard on the room’s back wall, snatching up exactly the sort of long leather-bound book Jewell had just been asking about. Recovering from the shock of the youth’s unexpected move, Jewell sprang after him, catching the fellow by his braid just two steps shy of the backdoor.
The boy gave a squawk and began to flail his arms and legs about wildly, shouting in frantic, high-pitched Cantonese. Jewell hauled him round so he could look him in the face. “Listen to me.” Exasperation lent a further edge to his tone. “A man is dead. You savvy ‘dead’?”
The boy tried to bite him for an answer. They struggled further. Jewell got between the youth and the backdoor. No sooner had the two of them faced off than a gong sounded loudly somewhere within Jewell’s head, lights cascaded in a thousand glorious colors before his eyes, and then the world went black.
An hour later Jewell’s ears still rang, and a knot had begun to rise on the back of his head. By the time he’d regained his senses there in Louie Chong’s laundry, the little Chinaman and whoever had hit him on the head were gone.
So was the ledger over which they’d struggled.
Porter was unmoved when Jewell reported his lack of progress to him. “Told you it was a waste of time,” he said. Then he’d suggested Jewell go see Chin Gee Hee. “If he can’t help you locate those two, no one in Seattle can.”
Chin Gee Hee was the best labor wrangler in Seattle, and a leading member of the remaining Chinese community. A resident of the territory for over twenty years, Chin had come to Seattle a decade previously, bringing a wife over from China and starting a family upon their arrival.
On that terrible day when most of the Chinese in Seattle had been rounded up and forced down to the docks in preparation for deportation, Chin’s family had been among them. It was a testament to the amount of respect he commanded among Seattle’s old guard that he had been able to talk his way into both staying and keeping his family in town. No question, Chin Gee Hee had pull, and not just with City Hall, but within the Chinese community as well. Rumor had it that he was also the eyes and ears of the Chinese Consulate down in San Francisco.
If you were Chinese and you wanted to work, Chin was the man to see. If you were white and wanted to hire Chinese labor, Chin was also the man to see.
He ran his business out of a brand-new building on the southwest corner of Washington Street and Second Avenue. Jewell found him there, seated at a roll-top desk pressed into a cramped spot along the back wall of the single-room structure. It took some doing to arrange to speak to Chin, because the place was alive with Chinese; customers and tradesmen, Chin’s employees and white contractors seeking labor.
In his mid-forties and a bit above average height for a Chinaman, Chin had thinning hair, a ready smile, and was dressed in rough Western work clothes, complete with squaretoed, heavy-soled boots. No braid, no shaven head, no silk clothing. With a battered broad-brimmed hat perched on the back of his head, he looked the part of the prosperous Western businessman he was.
“Always happy to help honored Treasury Man,” he said with a disarming grin after reading the note of introduction that Porter had scribbled for Jewell. They shook hands, and Chin offered the younger man a seat.
Chin’s open face clouded when Jewell mentioned his quest for information regarding a laundry owner named Louie Chong. “Louie Chong not good man,” he said. “Hock tell me when I first come here, ‘Stay clear Louie Chong.’ Not easy to do. Louie Chong bad man, but good customer.”
Jewell asked how to spell the name, and as he wrote it down, asked who Hock was.
“Business partner, Chin Chun Hock. We come from same village in Gwongdong.”
Porter had mentioned nothing about a business partner. “Oh, I was under the impression that you owned this place,” Jewell waved his hand to take in the entire building, “outright.”
“I do. Hock old business partner. I once own twenty-five percent of his company, Wa Chong. He buy me out last year.”
“May I ask why?”
“Many reason. Final and most important on his part, he no want to stay in employment business after riot in ’86.”
“And you?”
“Opium,” Chin murmured. “Not write that down, not report that. Hock want to sell opium here. I want no part of that. We dissolve partnership; I start up Quong Tuck Company last year.”
“And Hock knows Louie Chong well?”
“Better than me. Louie Chong come from our village too, but he older, I do not know him there. Those two know each other long time, though. Why you ask?”
Jewell told him about the body found washed up on Mercer Island, the laundry mark on the man’s tunic, and his attempts to track the mark in Chinatown’s laundries. He showed Chin the sketch he’d made of it.
The man’s eyes widened. “Triad mark,” he whispered.
“What is a triad?”
Chin placed a hand on Jewell’s arm, looking around the shop, motioning for him to keep his voice down. “Criminals. Smuggle opium, girls, whatever you like. That mark the sign of the Red Dragon of Macau, very powerful triad.”
“Why would anyone use such a symbol as a laundry mark?”
“No Chinaman who see that going to mess up order on shirt.” Chin cracked a lopsided grin at his own wry joke. “Louie Chong work with them.”
“He’s a member?”
“No. He work with them, though. Louie Chong smuggle for them. Long time ago. No more. Now run laundry.”
“Did you hear that he has gone to Gwongdong?”
Chin shrugged. “Porter tell you I know everything happen in Chinatown, eh? I do not. No hear about any trip for Louie Chong. Who tell you that?”
“His son.”
“Son? Louie Chong have no son.”
Jewell blinked, then recovered and said, “The boy who works in his shop. Calls himself Louie Gon.”
“Ah. Louie Gon not son. Louie Gon mui tsai.”
“What is… ‘mooey jooey’?”
“Mui tsai.”
“Mooey jai?”
Chin shook his head, smiled again, and said, “Louie Gon paper son. Son on paper. Only Chinese merchant and their son can go back and forth between Gold Mountain and Chin
a, so many merchant sell paper to other people they not know, saying, This my son, represent me, and that get new Chinamen into Gold Mountain.”
Jewell frowned. “Well, he didn’t want me to see the ledger where his boss kept track of laundry marks. Is it possible that the boy’s killed him and gone into business for himself?”
Chin laughed. “Louie Gon? Oh, no. Louie special case. No kill anyone.”
“He put up a pretty good fight with me when I asked to see that ledger.”
Chin laughed again. “He get away from you?”
“Someone fetched me a pretty rough blow on the back of the head while we struggled. Dazed me for a bit. When I came to my senses, I was alone in the place. Mr. Porter suggested I see you about it.”
Chin removed his hat and absently stroked the thinning hair on top of his head.
“Is Louie Chong a habitual user of opium?”
Chin nodded.
“So was our dead man. Had the stained fingertips and nails to prove it.”
Chin considered that for a moment. Then he said, “All ten fingers stained?”
Jewell shook his head. “He was missing his right pinkie finger.”
Chin nodded decisively and said, “You go home now.”
“What? Surely you don’t mean that. I have—”
“I see to this problem. I fix for you.”
“What is your interest?”
“No more excuse for riot here,” he said. “Seattle good city. My neighbor good neighbor. No talk of triad or mui tsai, Chinese murders done in local newspaper. I handle it. You let me. I bring you solution.” Chin looked from Jewell to an ancient grandfather clock against the wall behind him. “After 5 now. You go home. I bring you everything tomorrow.”
And just like that, the interview was over.
A game of whist with the other boarders at his rooming house hadn’t helped the evening go by any more quickly for James Robbins Jewell. He’d passed a sleepless night in the unseasonable heat waiting for dawn and an answer to the question of whether or not Chin would keep his word.
The walk to the office the next morning was uneventful, as was the morning routine of unlocking the backdoor, then the front, drawing the blinds, and looking over his desk for any pressing correspondence or other sort of paperwork in need of his immediate attention. It was only when Jewell sat down and happened to glance in the direction of the cell that took up one corner of the large room that he realized he was not alone.
An unkempt, bearded white man, black-haired and dull-eyed, half-sat, half-slumped against the opposite wall. He looked neither right, nor left, and took no notice of Jewell, not even when he attempted to speak to him. He was dressed in a ragged Chinese silk tunic and corduroy workmen’s trousers, with Chinese slippers on his feet. His fingernails bore the telltale signs of frequent opium use.
“Who are you?” Jewell asked.
The man ignored him.
“Why are you in the cage?”
The man kept silent, his blank stare unchanging.
A double-folded and sealed note with the word Porter typewritten on it lay on the floor in front of the cell. As Jewell stooped to pick it up, he muttered, “If this is from Chin, why is it addressed to my boss, not to me?” It was 8:30. Over the next half hour Jewell considered breaking the seal at least once per minute.
“Ran afoul of a mui tsai, did you?” Porter said when he’d finished reading the note. It was five minutes past 9.
“According to Mr. Chin Gee Hee, I did.”
“You’ve done nice work on this, boy. Nice work, indeed. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you.”
“I fail to see how I’ve done anything of the kind. If this ‘mooey jai’ killed our Chinaman, then who is the fellow in the cage? Why does he resist any attempt at communication?”
“The fellow in the cage is the killer of our man, and that man is without doubt Louie Chong. The mui tsai played no part in this except that of victim, poor thing.”
“But then why did this ‘paper son’ of Louie Chong’s fight me so hard to keep me from that ledger?”
“Paper son?”
“Yes, the ‘mooey jai,’ that’s how Mr. Chin translated the name: called him a ‘paper son’ in English. Claimed it was a reference to some false identification scheme running rampant through China.”
“A mui tsai,” Porter said, “is not a son of any kind. The phrase mui tsai in Cantonese means ‘slave girl’.”
Jewell’s jaw dropped. It all suddenly made sense. The slight build, the odd cast of the boy’s features, the piping voice.
Porter went back to perusing Chin’s letter. “Chin’s old partner Chin Chun Hock runs an opium den in the basement of his establishment. The bulls know about it. As long as they get their cut, they turn a blind eye to it, shrug it off as being part of the degenerate Oriental culture. Time was when part and parcel of that den was a brothel stocked with Cantonese girls brought over here by the triads. Chin bought their freedom as part of his deal to leave Hock with the lion’s share of the profits from their partnership. But Louie Chong had pull with the triad, and he’d already bought one of the girls to keep for himself. He passed her off as a boy working in his laundry. You can imagine how else he used her. It was common knowledge among the Chinese. I told you that their notions of charity are not the same as ours.”
“So why did this fellow,” Jewell motioned with his head in the direction of the cell and its occupant, “kill Louie Chong and dump him in Lake Washington?”
“Who can say? Some sense of chivalry, perhaps?”
“I doubt that. Look at the poor wretch. He’s an opium fiend if ever there was one. And where is the girl?”
“She’s gone. Chin didn’t mention what’s become of her, but I have no doubt that she’s not to be found within the limits of King County this morning.”
Jewell sat thinking for a moment. Porter watched him intently. At length Jewell said, “I didn’t see any of it.”
Porter shifted his bulk in the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. chair. “You knew which questions to ask, just not which answers to listen for. But you’ve shown promise I didn’t think you had in you. On the other hand,” he said as he reached for his pocket watch and began to wind it, “Chin did tell you everything you needed to know in that single conversation. You’ve come a long way in three months, but if you’re going to be the Treasury Man in these parts, you’ve still got quite a ways to go before you’re ready.”
“Yes sir. Apparently I have much to learn,” Jewell said, chastened.
“Just remember this: it’s also possible to go too far, to be too good at your job. It’s a tricky, tricky balance. Don’t go far enough and you can’t understand them and you won’t get anything constructive done. Don’t get the work done and you risk losing your position. Go too far and you risk much more. There’s a lot more at work in Chinatown than meets the eye.”
“How do you mean?”
Porter motioned with a broad hand past Jewell’s shoulder in the direction of the cell and the wretch who occupied it, the man turned completely inward, focused on the wreckage of a last opium dream.
“That,” he said glumly, “was once Sebastian Clute.”
THE MAGNOLIA BLUFF
BY SKYE MOODY
Magnolia
I
Before his star rose Skippy Smathers worked the carney circuit. He always played the dwarf clown. At thirteen he joined Carneytown Circus and right off the bat they made him a solo act. He’d been clowning in that show ten years when one night on a slippery tightrope Mel the Diminutive Man stepped into his life. The way it happened was some kind of kismet.
It happened under the big top in Walla Walla, Washington. Walking the highwire, Skippy lost balance and toppled off, tumbling for a chaotic eternity, pitching and falling until finally he landed with a broadside bounce in the mesh safety net. It wasn’t the first time Skippy had plunged from a high-wire, but this mishap, more topsy-turvy than most, jarred his nerves. Floundering in the net webbing, panic-strick
en, Skippy’s fear paralyzed him while the crowd roared: “Go back up! Sissy clown! Go back up!”
He wore a costume of baby clothes, a frilly bonnet, a grease-pencil baby face. The crowd saw an overgrown infant, not a twenty-three-year-old terrified dwarf. Jeers and hisses rained down. But he wouldn’t go back up there. Couldn’t. He sat in the net bawling as the crowd booed the frightened clown-baby.
“Booooo.” “Sissy Pants!” “Dumb midget!” “Booooo!”
In the wings, Mel the Diminutive Man heard the rude din. Grabbing a long baton Mel stepped onto the tightrope, regal in his leotard and tights, a natural born star. The spotlight swung to the tightrope, the crowd naturally rolled their eyes up to the sleek, pixie-like man stepping into the glare. Balancing his weight with the long baton Mel performed slow pirouettes along the tightrope, distracting the audience, while in the net below Skippy foundered in fear’s lap. Somewhere a drummer tickled cymbals, adding to the tension as Mel the Diminutive Man captivated the awestruck crowd.
No longer the focal point, Skippy gradually recovered his nerves, scrambled over to the ladder, up the tightrope, and set a seasoned foot on the taut line. One cautiously arched step after another he moved toward this dark stranger, this apparition, this highwire angel offering his tiny hand. A breathless moment later, Skippy touched that hand to thundering applause.
Mel grinned at Skippy and quipped, “Way to go, sport.”
Mel’s first brush with an audience earned him a standing ovation, but he reacted with scorn and revulsion. After all these years of inventing Mel the Diminutive Man, he had squandered his debut on this claptrap crowd.
II
It was 1973. Mel was twenty-one and had been living off Ma all these years because she insisted her pixie was too delicate for work. When Ma died of exhaustion Mel worried about what would become of him, but not for long. Under Ma’s mattress Mel discovered a fortune in nickels and dimes and quarters that she had squirreled away over the years of hard labor. Her accumulated pocket change would have choked a Coinstar.