Yellowthread Street

by William Marshall

  ‘O.K.,’ O’Yee said, and searched him.

  ‘Don’t kill me,’ the African said quietly as O’Yee handcuffed him. The manager came out and saw the scene.

  ‘Call the Station,’ O’Yee said.

  The African said to the manager, ‘Tell him not to kill me.’

  The manager hesitated.

  ‘Call the Station,’ O’Yee said. ‘I got him.’

  The manager scuttled away.

  ‘It wasn’t a real gun,’ the African said pleadingly. ‘I wouldn’t have shot anyone. It wasn’t a real gun!’

  O’Yee turned to look at the pistol. The fall had snapped it in half and there was a roll of toy caps sticking out of its muzzle near a collection of brittle plastic and metal springs.

  ‘All right,’ O’Yee said. ‘We don’t kill people here. We arrest them.’

  The African released a sigh of relief. He said, ‘I’m scared of guns.’

  ‘Gun?’ O’Yee said to himself. He thought, ‘Gun?’ He said, ‘Shit! Gun!’

  He knew he had forgotten something.

  Mrs Skilbeck said, ‘No.’ She waved Auden aside. She said, ‘I’m not talking to any of you unhelpful bastards and I’m not letting you go away for hours to talk to that Chinese girl. I’m going through to talk to that Chinese girl.’

  And she did.

  ‘Not bad,’ the manager said. He watched the police van until it disappeared around the corner, ‘It’s a pity it wasn’t more dramatic.’ He said it to the accompaniment of a burst of machine gun fire from inside the theatre, ‘Still, you got him.’

  ‘I got him,’ O’Yee said. He glanced under his coat to make sure he had remembered to put his pistol back in the shoulder holster, ‘I didn’t have to fire a shot.’

  The manager stepped back a pace and swelled his chest. ‘On behalf of the principals of this beautiful cinema and to show our esteem and gratitude for the service you have performed on behalf of the police force of this city, as the manager of this beautiful cinema theatre I have been asked by my principals to hand to you this small token of our appreciation and esteem with the best wishes of the staff and principals and management of the Peacock Cinema, Hong Bay, British Crown Colony of Hong Kong. Presented to Detective Inspector O’Yee by Mr Oswald Han.’ He tapped his coat lightly with his thumb, ‘That’s me.’

  ‘Thank you, Mr Han,’ O’Yee said, ‘but we’re not allowed to take money.’

  A look of horror flitted across Mr Han’s features. ‘It isn’t money!’ What a suggestion—

  ‘Thanks,’ O’Yee said. Mr Han handed him a sealed envelope. O’Yee said, ‘I’ll open it in the presence of witnesses at the Police Station.’

  ‘It isn’t money,’ Mr Han said again. ‘It certainly isn’t money.’

  It wasn’t. It was a year’s free admission pass to the afternoon and morning sessions at the Peacock Cinema, Icehouse Street, Hong Bay, presented to Mr O’Yee by Mr Oswald Han, Manager—front stalls.

  ‘No,’ Minnie Oh said, ‘he hasn’t.’

  ‘Aren’t you going to look for him?’

  ‘There’s not a great deal we can do,’ Minnie said. She moved the stack of handout sheets warning whores about the dangers of VD without a regular checkup out of Mrs Skilbeck’s view. It was in Cantonese, but there were some graphic illustrations. ‘He’s only been missing a few hours. Have you tried the airport? Perhaps he’s gone back there. There hasn’t been an accident or we would have heard about it. Perhaps he’s—’

  ‘Perhaps he’s in jail!’ Mrs Skilbeck said bitterly, ‘I’ll kill him.’

  ‘No,’ Minnie Oh said. She smiled pleasantly and shook her head to show just how far removed the residents of Yellow-thread Street’s jail were from respectable American tourists from New Jersey. ‘The only people in jail here at the moment are an axe murderer and someone who won’t give his name who assaulted a policeman.’

  ‘They don’t sound like my husband,’ Mrs Skilbeck said. She rose, and sniffed at the VD brochures. She said, ‘You don’t have a very nice job for a young girl.’

  ‘No,’ Minnie said.

  ‘I’ll be back,’ Mrs Skilbeck said, and left.

  At midnight Hot Time Alice decided that business at Alice’s could take care of itself while she went around to Alice’s Goldsmith’s and Jewellery to check that the customer-deterring fingers on the display cases had been removed by the ambulancemen.

  She waddled into the store at exactly seven minutes past midnight, found the assistant smoking a cigarette, roared at him, sat down behind the counter with her books and her cashbox and sent him out to bring her back a bottle of beer.

  At eight minutes past midnight the Mongolian came in. He examined Alice (Alice examined him), decided she was the cleaning woman pilfering cash from the fingerless proprietor (Alice decided he was no customer), and said, ‘Owner!’

  ‘I’m the owner,’ Alice said. She shut the metal cashbox and stood up with her fat hands on her hips.

  ‘Owner,’ the Mongolian said. He was not a man to entertain two thoughts in his shaven head at the same time, ‘Owner!’

  People didn’t talk to Alice in that tone. ‘People don’t talk to me in that tone,’ Alice said. ‘So get out!’

  ‘Owner,’ the Mongolian said.

  ‘Me!’ Alice said. She flicked her thumb at her giant breasts, ‘Owner—me!’

  ‘Police,’ the Mongolian said.

  ‘Like hell you are,’ Alice said.

  ‘You police.’

  ‘Like hell I am.’

  The Mongolian shook his head. ‘No call police.’

  Alice leaned back on the heels of her shoes and gave the impression of looking down from her five foot three to the Mongolian’s lesser six foot three.

  The Mongolian thumped his barrel-stave chest with his thumb. It sounded like an elephant’s heart beating at full charge. ‘Mongolian,’ the Mongolian said.

  Hot Time Alice Ping stopped leaning back on the heels of her shoes.

  ‘No police,’ the Mongolian said. ‘No police.’

  Alice put her fingers behind her back, still attached to her wrists and going to stay that way.

  ‘Fingers,’ the Mongolian said.

  ‘We can talk about this,’ Alice said, ‘Listen, we can talk about—’

  ‘No police. Bad thing,’ the Mongolian, who was no good at long conversations, said. He drew his eleven-inch-long knife and lopped at Alice’s ear which she did not have behind her back.

  There were then a number of sounds in the store in Camphorwood Lane. There was a swish as the kukri completed its arc and a click as the Mongolian sheathed it in the same motion, a metallic tinkle as Alice’s bangle earring struck the glass counter, a plop as Alice’s ear followed it, the sound of the Mongolian’s footsteps on the floor as he left, a clunk as he shut the glass door behind him, and finally, Alice’s broken voice as she began running about in tiny circles behind the counter looking at her ear and screaming.

  The assistant came back with the beer, looked at the ear and the glass counter, at Hot Time Alice Ping running, and drank the contents of the bottle in one gulp.

  A.M.

  There were two conferences going on in Hong Bay. It was two fifteen in the morning and at the venue of the first conference, the Yellowthread Street Police Station, the atmosphere was stale and fuggy with cigarette smoke, half empty cardboard cups of aromatic burnt-bean coffee, O’Yee’s almost devoured night meal of take-away noodles and pork, and Auden’s and O’Yee’s bad jokes.

  ‘Ear today, gone tomorrow,’ O’Yee said and popped noodles into his mouth.

  Feiffer continued reading Spencer’s report on his first interview with Hot Time Alice Ping of the two ears and Sister Sung’s telephoned news of Hot Time Alice Ping of the one. Feiffer said, ‘Shut up.’

  ‘Don’t be so cruel,’ Spencer said to O’Yee and Auden. He read his report over Feiffer’s shoulder.

  ‘Ear’s to you,’ O’Yee said and raised his cup.

  Auden collapsed in helpless laught
er and banged his desk.

  ‘The Andrews Sisters,’ Feiffer said. He said to Spencer, ‘What’s this word?’

  ‘Frank,’ Spencer said. He read on, ‘. . . it was a frank and meaningful interview . . .’

  ‘It says “frunk”.’

  ‘It’s the typewriter,’ Spencer said.

  Auden banged on his desk.

  Two streets away, in Alice’s, the customers had been cleared out and the place closed for a private party (the notice on the door said). The guests had come down from Hanford Hill and they were not feeling very festive. Mr Boon had come down from the hill and he never felt festive. Tonight he was downright peeved. Mr Boon looked at Alice. Alice sat opposite him in a wheelchair with her ear wrapped in a space helmet bandage. Mr Boon sucked his hollow tooth and felt peeved. He sucked his hollow tooth again. Mr Boon turned his head to another angle and looked at Alice out of the corner of his eye and sucked his hollow tooth.

  ‘All my friends,’ Alice said sentimentally. The men from Hanford Hill, their bodyguards, their employees and Alice sat in a circle in the middle of the cleared dance floor and ashed their cigarettes into a centrally placed brass spittoon; ‘My dear old friends,’ Alice said and wiped a jelly tear from her mummy-wrapped cheek. ‘My dear, dear old friends,’ Alice said.

  Mr Boon moved his head and contemplated Alice from under hooded lids. ‘Quiet, woman,’ Mr Boon said.

  ‘Yes, Mr Boon,’ Alice said.

  Mr Boon sucked his hollow tooth again. Mr Boon was in his late fifties, fat and well oiled, well preserved and looked after; he had an almost full set of gold-filled dentures, but he had a hollow tooth. He sucked it.

  ‘Mongolian,’ Mr Boon said, ‘Mongolian.’

  ‘Independent,’ Hernando Haw from Macao said. He curled his lip, ‘Independent.’

  ‘Hmm,’ Mr Boon said. He blew a pollution of smoke into the circle like the Queen Elizabeth with its boilers shut down. Outside the circle, against the walls, the whores stood at various points of the compass watching the men and the smoke and the toothsucking like a scene from The Hustler. ‘Low Fat?’ Mr Boon said.

  ‘Independent operator,’ Low Fat said. He shook his head. ‘Independent.’

  ‘Stupid,’ Mr Boon said.

  ‘Stupid,’ Hernando Haw from Macao agreed.

  Low Fat bobbed his head up and down. ‘Stupid.’

  Mr Boon surveyed the antidotes to stupidity in his dance hall pharmacy. He looked at Shotgun Sen. He looked at The Club (With Nails). He looked at Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller. He looked at Crushed Toes and the other one (no one knew his name—he was The Fourth Gangster) and he thought them a potent bunch.

  ‘Stupid,’ Mr Boon said. He waved his hand in deep pity for someone so stupid. ‘So, so sad, sad stupid.’

  ‘Stupid!’ Mr Boon said. ‘Stupid!’

  Mr Haw from Macao nodded, Low Fat nodded, Alice nodded, the henchmen nodded, Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller ran his thumb along the hone of the short sword under his coat and he nodded. Apricot Tang Lee shot a thrilled look at Posey Yin and Tinkerbell Lin Wong and she nodded.

  Alice said, ‘Stupid.’

  Mr Boon turned his attention to Osaku Onuki. He considered the little Japanese’s squat body and the ripple of his shoulders and forearms under his little squat Japanese suit. Osaka Onuki giggled and touched at his short sword.

  ‘Kukri,’ Mr Boon said, ‘Indian Gurkha knife one foot long, very sharp.’

  Osaka Onuki the Disemboweller giggled. Mr Boon turned his eyes on to Shotgun Sen. The twin barrels of Sen’s sawed-off twelve-gauge shotgun under his left armpit down to his trouser belt made him look like a fat frog with goitre. Shotgun Sen patted the outline of the twin barrels. Crushed Toes said nothing. He tapped the base of his chair with a fast rhythmic tapping and waited for Mr Boon to give the word. The Fourth Gangster crossed his arms and touched at the two pistols in shoulder holsters he wore, one under each armpit, and made a kissing sound at the floor. Apricot Tang Lee felt a shiver of excitement run up her back and down into her underwear.

  ‘Warn, hurt, cripple, kill,’ Mr Haw from Macao said. They were the choices to be voted on, ‘Blind, amputate, scar, castrate.’

  ‘Kill!’ Alice said through her swathes of linen.

  Mr Boon thought about it. He sucked his hollow tooth in contemplation.

  Francis John Vinehouse, aged fifty, was the Hong Bay taxman. He went into the bar Feiffer had gone into earlier in the day and sat down. A stripper was in the process of removing her bra from her breasts and he waited until, released, they bobbed up and down like two ripe melons to the bumping of the music from a scratched record on a player on the bar. Then he took out a little leather covered notebook and made an entry in it with his Parker pen.

  Entertainment tax not paid, he wrote in the notebook. He wrote the date and put the word Entertainment after it. He counted the audience of happy drinkers and wrote Audience: 37.

  He glanced at the stripper. She had blotches on her stomach and acne on her face.

  Mr Vinehouse was a regulation man. If the tax regulations considered it entertainment, it was entertainment, and if Mr Vinehouse himself did not consider it entertainment and the regulations did Mr Vinehouse admitted his error. It was entertainment.

  He underlined the word in his little leather covered notebook—Entertainment—and put the Parker pen back carefully into his shirt pocket.

  ‘Four fingers and one ear,’ Feiffer said. He put the reports down on his desk and lit a cigarette, ‘Our Mongolian friend runs a busy trade. Have we got any leads on him?’

  O’Yee shook his head.

  ‘Nothing known? No previous?’

  O’Yee shook his head.

  ‘An independent?’

  O’Yee nodded.

  Spencer glared at O’Yee. It was Spencer’s case, Spencer thought. He said, ‘Alice said he was new.’

  ‘Christopher—’ Feiffer began. O’Yee yawned and grasped his heart. He said in great pain and discomfort, ‘Oh—!’

  ‘The old trouble again?’ Feiffer enquired pleasantly.

  ‘The old trouble,’ O’Yee said. He nodded bravely, ‘I’ve done my bit for the night.’

  ‘He’s pretending,’ Spencer said. He looked at O’Yee with contempt. ‘He’s just pretending so he can get out of doing anything about it. It’s my case anyway.’

  ‘Right!’ O’Yee said readily. He nodded encouragingly to Feiffer, ‘It’s his case. He got it all out of Alice.’

  ‘I did,’ Spencer said. ‘It was a very valuable interview.’

  ‘Keen as mustard,’ O’Yee said. He broke into what he thought was his Destry Rides Again voice, ‘Give the kid a break, Sheriff.’

  ‘Auden?’

  ‘I’ve got an accident report to type up, Boss,’ Auden said. He held the particular piece of paper above his head and screwed it quickly into his typewriter, ‘See?’

  ‘I’ve done my bit for the night too,’ Feiffer said, ‘I’m not going to stand out in Camphorwood Lane for the rest of the night dying for a pee in case some mad bastard with a kukri turns up.’

  ‘Quite right,’ O’Yee said. ‘You have to think of your wife and children.’

  ‘He hasn’t got any children,’ Spencer said irritably. He couldn’t understand it. It was typical: because Alice had a bad reputation everyone was against her. He said, ‘If you’re all so afraid why don’t you send little Minnie Oh to do your work for you?’

  ‘Good idea,’ O’Yee said. ‘That’s a very good idea.’

  ‘You stink!’ Spencer said, ‘Poor Alice Ping.’

  ‘Poor One-Eared Alice Ping,’ O’Yee said, ‘Poor Hot Time One-Eared Frank and Valuable Alice.’ He said, ‘I’ve done my bit for law and order.’

  Feiffer decided.

  ‘We’ll leave it till the morning,’ Feiffer said. ‘The day shift can handle it. He won’t do anything else tonight. I think I’m right.’

  He wasn’t. He was wrong. At that exact moment, the Mongolian was having a short but communicative
discussion with Mr Edgar Tan of Edgar Tan and Company, Jewellers, two doors away from Alice’s Goldsmith’s and Jewellery.

  It was an extremely brief discussion.

  The Mongolian said, ‘Money,’ and Mr Edgar Tan broke into laughter.

  The Mongolian said, ‘Money,’ and drew his kukri and Mr Edgar Tan said, ‘Ha-ha!’

  The Mongolian said, ‘Fingers,’ and Mr Tan danced away and said, ‘You in big trouble.’

  ‘Money!’ the Mongolian repeated. Mr Tan repeated, ‘Ha!’ The Mongolian ordered, ‘Hand!’

  ‘You in big trouble,’ Mr Tan said, ‘Wrong person to chop. Hanford Hill gang.’ He stood out of range and waggled his still intact index finger, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong, Hanford Hill—wrong, wrong, wrong.’

  ‘Money!’ the Mongolian said. He kicked aside one of the counter display cases and faced the waggling finger. The finger disappeared behind its owner’s back. ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong,’ Mr Tan chided him, ‘Wrong, wrong, wrong.’

  The Mongolian looked at Mr Tan. Mr Tan smiled happily. The Mongolian looked at his eleven-inch long kukri with a silver lion’s head pommel. ‘Wrong—ha!’ Mr Tan said. ‘Can do nothing—wrong, wrong, wrong.’

  So the Mongolian killed him.

  ‘Hernando?’ Mr Boon asked.

  Hernando Haw from Macao shook his head, ‘Cripple.’

  ‘No!’ Alice protested. Mr Boon ignored her.

  ‘Cripple,’ Mr Boon confirmed, ‘Cripple?’

  ‘Cripple,’ Mr Haw said. He threw his extinct cheroot butt into the brass spittoon. Crushed Toes grinned lovingly at him. Crushed Toes was the official crippler.

  ‘Low?’ Mr Boon asked.

  Low Fat considered it. He said, ‘I don’t know . . .’

  Crushed Toes nodded encouragingly at him. Low Fat looked at Tinkerbell Lin Wong. ‘I don’t know what Miss Alice wants.’ He looked pointedly at Tinkerbell Lin Wong.

  ‘Kill!’ One-Eared Alice said, ‘Kill!’ She touched at her ear bandages gingerly, ‘Look what that bastard did to me!’

  ‘Hmm,’ Mr Boon said. He said kindly to Low, ‘Take your time; no one wants to make the wrong decision.’

  Hernando Haw made a tiny bow of respect to Low Fat. He said, ‘It’s all right with me. I don’t mind.’ He explained with a little self critical motion of his chin: ‘I’m always a little over cautious.’