Second Guessing

by K. J. Emrick

  I slide it into the holster, make sure it’s in there tight, and settle the shirt around it. Anyone looking at me wouldn’t be able to tell I’m armed. I might be looking for a little excitement, but I’m not stupid.

  So. Guess I’m ready to go meet a gangster.

  Well, almost. I need one more thing first.

  Chapter Four

  You get a lot of strange looks when you’re lugging a rolled-up carpet out of your apartment at three in the morning.

  Mrs. Anderson in 2B saw me on my way out. She waved and turned away. I waved and kept going. I know she saw the rug hanging over my shoulder. Thankfully, she didn’t ask me about it. This time.

  Harry’s Persian rug is a beautiful work of art, with geometrical designs and lots of colors and those tassels all around the edge. It’s a bit much for the living room floor of an apartment like mine, but I like it. It’s just very, very heavy. Especially when you’re carrying it all by yourself. I have to be careful not to drag it on the pavement in the parking lot. With Roxy’s door open, and the seat flipped forward, I slide the carpet into the backseat. It makes kind of a U shape to fit in there but once it’s done, off I go.

  I looked left for traffic before pulling out onto the street, and then when I looked to the right, there was Harry sitting in the front passenger seat. Just like that. Poof. A little smoke, the smell of flowers, and there he is.

  “You know,” I tell him as I pull out of the parking lot, “you could at least help me carry the rug. Your house is heavy. And that’s coming from a former Marine.”

  He leans back in the seat, resting his arm on the window ledge, more at ease than I would have expected him to be for a centuries’ old genie who’s never owned a car of his own. “We have talked about that, my lady. Your neighbors don’t know you’re sharing your apartment with a genie. If they see me with you, carrying my rug, they will ask questions.”

  “Yeah. Questions I won’t be able to answer.”

  Silence falls between us for a block or two. Then he shifts his legs, crossing his feet at the ankles in a space that’s cramped for a guy his size. “You know, we could simply let your neighbors know I’m there. We could say I’m a friend visiting from out of town. That is pretty much the truth, anyway.”

  “Maybe so, Harry, but we’ve talked about that, too.” I take a turn, and then another one right after. “It’s a modern age, but a single woman living with a good-looking guy with lots of muscles and beautiful white teeth leads to a lot of rumors. Ones that are hard to shake.”

  “Do we care?” he asks me, rolling both of his hands in the air. His bracelets reflect the light from streetlamps as he does. “I mean, is that something we care about? What other people think?”

  I frowned and sighed out a long breath through my nose. Ordinarily, he’d be right. I don’t usually care about what people think of me. I know who I am. I don’t need anyone else to validate my life. But rumors that I’m shacked up with some dark-skinned Adonis? Well, those kinds of rumors can kill a reputation. At the very least they’d kill my dating life.

  Yeah, I know, what dating life, right?

  Well someday I may want to go on a date, or two, and no guy is going to come anywhere near me if they think I’m living with Harry. I bet he’d make a great boyfriend, but he’s gonna make any man who wants to ask me out feel like a little child in comparison. Guys are always so caught up with comparing the size of their… muscles.

  I guess I don’t really have an answer for him about when, or if, we can ever let people know he’s a part of my life. So I don’t bother trying. He’s living with me, and it’s not that I’m embarrassed to have a guy in my apartment when I haven’t been able to hold down a steady relationship for… well, like ever. I just don’t know how to explain him. It’s something we’ll have to figure out, sooner rather than later. He’s with me for four more cases, granting my wishes per our deal, but then I set him free.

  Where will he go then?

  “Hey, Sidney?” he asks me suddenly.

  He doesn’t call me by just my first name very often. When he does, it catches my attention. “Yeah, Harry. What’s up?”

  There’s a moment when I’m sure he’s about to say something important, or ask me something important, but the way he messes with my future-sense I can’t tell what it is. It’s a long moment of waiting for me, the girl who always knows what people are about to say to her. It’s why so many of my relationships fall apart, actually. No matter how sweet the words are that a guy is about to say to me, I’ve already heard them in my mind. Kind of ruins the romance.

  With Harry, it’s completely different.

  I’m finding that I like different.

  “Sooo,” he finally hums. “You really think my teeth are beautiful?”

  He smiles a wide smile and shows off those pretty white chompers of his. When he waggles his eyebrows, I laugh. There’s no way that was what he was going to say, but I appreciate the little bit of humor he’s thrown into our otherwise tense car ride. Neither one of us has mentioned Arnie Chen since we left my apartment. He must have more he wants to say about that, too, but we’ve only been talking about him and me. Almost like that was more important to him.

  I’d love to ask him why, or ask him what he really knows about Arnie Chen, but it’s too late. We’re here now.

  The Chinese restaurant looks different from the front than it did from the alley. The green neon sign in the window is flashing C-L-O-S-E-D, one letter at a time, but the lights are on inside. I can see round tables with red and white checkered cloths hanging over them, and chandeliers made to look like dragons holding white frosted cups of light. Narrow woven tapestries on the walls inside have pictures of cranes and sunsets and Chinese characters on them. I can’t read Mandarin any more than I can speak it, so for all I know they just say “eat more food” or “leave a big tip.”

  I park across the street and then just sit there for a while. It’s already been the twenty minutes I told Chen it would take me, and I really should get in there if I want any hope of him actually hiring me for whatever this is about, but still I sit here, tapping my thumb against the steering wheel, and looking into that apparently empty restaurant.

  He did promise it would be just him waiting for me. If he hasn’t lied to me, then what am I worried about?

  “Are you waiting for inspiration, my lady?” Harry asks me. “Or for your special gift to tell you what’s coming next?”

  That’s exactly what I was doing, actually. Three seconds at a time. I could wait here until daybreak and maybe nothing would happen. Not until I got out of the car and went through that door. There would be more people around. More witnesses to make sure nothing went wrong.

  Maybe that’s why Chen wanted to meet me now.

  Only one way to find out.

  “All right, then.” I open the door and pull the keys from Roxy’s ignition. This is Detroit. You don’t leave a car unlocked with the keys in it unless you want to find it in a thousand pieces up for sale on eBay. “Let’s do this, Harry.”

  Roxy’s suspension creaks when he gets out on his side. She’s starting to show her age, but she’s never let me down. I know I can depend on her. Just like I can depend on Harry.

  The front door to the restaurant is a steel frame with square glass windows, and a dragon’s head knocker in the middle. Since Chen’s waiting for me, I’m guessing the door will be open… and I’m right. The knob turns in my hand and we’re in.

  “Well that was easy.”

  “Easy, yes,” Harry agrees. “And perhaps a little suspicious. Let us go inside. Be careful, my lady.”

  “Hey, ‘careful’ is my middle name.”

  It’s actually not, and I’ve proven that time and time again.

  The dining area in the restaurant is empty. Nobody at the tables. Nobody at the empty sushi bar. Nobody anywhere. “Huh. Some welcoming committee. Where do you think everyone is? Harry? Hey… Harry?”

  When I turn around, Harry isn’t there.<
br />
  “What the hell, Harry?” I raise my voice, as if he might be hiding under one of the tables and just didn’t hear me. Harry wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t leave me when he thought I was in danger. He was against us coming here in the first place, and now he’s just gone? No way.

  I look back toward my car on the other side of the street. Harry’s only got a certain distance that he can go from that rug. Kind of like a dog on a leash. He’s got a radius, a wide circle, that he can’t step out of. That’s why he can’t leave my apartment without us—or rather, without me—bringing the rug along. But the restaurant isn’t too far away from the car, so what’s going on…?

  “Your friend is all right,” I hear someone say from behind me.

  I know that voice, and who it is that will be standing there, even before I turn around. “Mister Chen, so nice to see you again.”

  He’s at the back of the room now. Apparently he waited for my attention to be elsewhere before he made his entrance. Because that’s not creepy at all. He’s still wearing that white suit and matching tie, or maybe it’s a different one that’s just identical. I can’t tell. Einstein had this thing about having a closet full of identical outfits so he wouldn’t have to spend any mental energy deciding what to wear. With Chen’s love of big words, maybe he’s a fan of Albert Einstein, too, and copied his fashion sense.

  “What did you do to Harry?” I ask him.

  His three chins quiver as he laughs. “I see that you’re ardent where your friends are concerned. I like that quality in my employees.”

  “I’m not your employee yet, and you didn’t answer my question,” I remind him.

  I’m going to have to look up ‘ardent’ when I get home. I‘m guessing it’s a good thing.

  “Come with me,” he says, waving a pudgy hand for me to join him. “The matter I need your assistance with is in the back. The sooner we begin, the sooner we will be done. And, by extension, the sooner you can return to your friend Harry. Ah, but first, this matter will require your discretion. I trust that I can depend on you for that?”

  I give him a sharp nod. “All of my clients have confidentiality with any matters we discuss. I don’t talk about their problems with anyone else.”

  “Very good. I knew you were the right person to hire for this job.”

  “Mister Chen, I haven’t agreed to take you on as a client yet.”

  “You will, Miss Stone. As I said, you and I are alike.” Reaching behind himself, he opens a door I hadn’t seen and throws it open wide. “Being the way we are, I have no doubt that this case will fascinate you. Come. I’ll show you.”

  “The way we are?” I parrot back to him. “What does that mean?”

  He motions through the door and says again, “Come. I’ll show you.”

  There’s an alarm bell ringing in my brain. I don’t know what he means by ‘the way we are,’ but considering there’s a big part of my life I try to keep secret, I don’t like the way he said that. Plus, Harry just up and disappeared the minute we stepped foot inside the restaurant. No, I don’t like any of this very much.

  Chen squeezes himself through that door without any noticeable effort at all even though it’s half his size. That leaves me with just two choices. Follow him, or leave. I still don’t know why he thinks me and him are so similar but he’s right about one thing. I’m intrigued.

  So I follow him.

  The back room here is an office. It’s not big, but somehow it manages to appear… what’s the word… oversized. A desk framed with heavy wooden trim. A bookcase that goes from floor to ceiling. A potted plant with leaves as wide as my thigh. It’s all crammed into this space. On the far wall is a window that only a child could fit through, and under the window is a table as tall as my waist with long, round legs. There’s a round glass disc on top of the table, about a foot in diameter, just lying there, looking completely out of place.

  “Ah,” Mister Chen says, “I see you noticed it right away. I thought you might.”

  He sits himself down behind the desk, in an overstuffed chair that I would have thought could never fit in the tight space by that wall. With his elbows settled on the table, he grins, and watches me expectantly.

  I stuff my hands into my pockets. I don’t feel like playing games. “You know, Mister Chen, this will go a lot quicker if you just tell me why I’m here.”

  “Yes, but what would be the fun in that?”

  “You said you wanted to get the matter settled quickly,” I remind him.

  With intentional slowness, he rolls one plump hand. “Indulge me, Miss Stone. Call it a job interview.”

  With a heavy sigh, I wonder what I’ve gotten myself into. Fine. He wants to test my skills to see if I’m as good as I think I am. It wouldn’t be the first time that somebody didn’t take me at my word.

  One of these days I’m going to write a book of rules and tips for the modern private investigator. Pro tip number three—right after always settle on payment up front and never get personally involved with a client—is this: Usually the clues you need to solve a case are right in front of you. All you have to do is look hard enough.

  All right, so let’s look at this crime scene. My eyes go to that flat glass disc again. In a room that is crammed from corner to corner, here’s a table with nothing on it but a round circle of…

  Ah.

  “There was something on that desk. Something that’s gone.” I put the pieces together one at a time until a picture starts to reveal itself. “And I take it, since you called me to investigate it, that whatever that something was got stolen from you. And, again, because you called me and not the police, I’m guessing you don’t want to advertise that you owned whatever was here. Something illegal, or something personal, maybe.”

  “Personal,” he says, and actually claps his hands together for a few slow beats. “It’s a personal item from my childhood… and possibly illegal, depending on which governmental agency you happen to be speaking to. There is another possibility you haven’t mentioned.”

  “Oh? Why don’t you tell me what that would be.”

  “Perhaps I chose not to involve the police simply because I want the thief to be caught and punished my way, as I did with that employee who stole your client’s bracelet.”

  I chewed that over for a minute. I actually had considered that, but it didn’t fit. “If that’s all you wanted, Mister Chen, you have people to take care of that for you. A call to the police would get you your item back, and once you knew who it was that stole it from you, then you could always go serve your kind of justice then. No. I think I was right in the first place. You don’t want people to know this got taken from you. You want my discretion, like you said.”

  “Bravo, Miss Stone. You have it exactly right.”

  See? I am just as good as I say I am. Maybe I should have that printed on my business cards. Of course, I’d have to get business cards first.

  I’m still looking over the room, seeing what else I can see. Putting little things together. I have questions. Lots of questions, actually. “Mister Chen, let’s start with something simple. What was here? What got taken?”

  He clears his throat, and when he does his cheeks color. Obviously, this is just as personal to him as he made it sound. “To understand what I have lost,” he tells me, “you will first need to understand some of my history. In China, in the place of my birth, the dragon is revered as the wisest of all creatures. They helped create the universe. They defend the sky and the stars. In some parts of China, people even believe they control the weather.”

  “Yeah, I like dragons too. That Game of Thrones show was pretty cool. Too bad they aren’t real.”

  “Hmm,” he mutters, with a world of things left unsaid in that one little sound. “There’s a story from our ancestors that you may have heard, since you like dragons. In the time before human history began, the great dragon Yin Xing Long was roaming the land, far and wide, planting the cherry blossom trees that created such a pleasing fragr
ance. His hope was that the trees would attract a companion, someone he could spend his lonely days with. There were other dragons around at the time, naturally, but they were spread across the globe of a young Earth, performing their own duties given to them by Yin and Yang, the land and the sky.”

  “Oh, wait. I know Yin and Yang. The opposites of light and dark?”

  “Yes.” He seems pleased that I know at least that much. “Yin. Yang. Opposites of nature, good and evil, land and sky, male and female. But you have never heard of the great dragon Yin Xing Long?”

  “No,” I admit with a shake of my head. I’ve never heard this story but then again, I’m not overly well versed in Chinese mythology. It’s a rich history they have, and very imaginative. The way Mister Chen is telling this story almost makes it seem more like history than a fairy tale. You’d think the guy had lived through it himself.

  His eyes look sad as he tells the next part. “Few people know of Yin Xing Long anymore. His stories are lost in the noise of a day and age where digital screens give us ten-second soundbites with more flash than substance. The great dragon’s life is eternal, and too large to be contained by such things. Well. I digress. Yin Xing Long was planting his trees, watching them grow, tending to them, and it pleased him to see such beauty. But, he was lonely. He wished for a companion. The other dragons never came to his part of the world, and he was far too busy to go to them. Then one day, a being named Luduan came to his cherry blossom grove. She was beautiful in Yin Xing Long’s eyes. And why not? The Chinese unicorns were said to be the most amazing of creatures.”

  “Unicorns?” I can’t help the note of surprise in my voice. “You mean like… unicorns? Seriously? I didn’t know there were unicorns in Chinese myth.”

  “Certainly there were. Just not the pretty white horse variety, prancing all about. No. Chinese unicorns were proud creatures and Luduan was the queen among them all. She was an elegant deer, with shimmering green scales, the tail of a horse, the head of a lion, and a single curving horn on her head. Yin Xing Long was captivated by her beauty. And truly, who wouldn’t be?”