Naked Moon

by Domenic Stansberry

  He put on his clothes and stood looking down into the alley.

  It was nice to think you had a choice, that your actions made a difference one way or another, that you could somehow change things. He liked to think this was true. Meanwhile, the fire alley ended in a blind, and the iron gate at the other end was locked. He took the staircase down to what had once been the central lobby. The lobby served as a storefront now. The old hotel counter was more or less intact, and the clerk sat on the other side of the counter, near a fat Buddha whose hand rested in an unseemly place.

  The store was full of large statues, imitation jade priced as if it were the real thing. The goddess Para. The Buddha sublime. Siddhartha under the Bodhi tree. Some of the poses were quite classic at first glance, but there was nonetheless something titillating and askew. An erection beneath the robes. A lecherous grin.

  Guan Yin, goddess of compassion, her ass up in the air.

  The counter man had a thin mustache and nodded at Dante. He was not Chinese, but Russian, and it was the Russians, Dante knew, who laundered money in shops like these, ledgering cash receipts. Even so, the place ultimately answered to the Wus, most likely, but that was true of most every business in the area.

  “The iron gate,” said Dante. “At the top of the alley. You keep it locked.”

  “You have a problem?”

  “That’s a fire alley.”

  “Tell the fire marshal, you don’t like it.” The clerk was surly, but at the same time, how he shifted, eyes darting, it was clear the fire marshal was the last person he wanted involved. With the election going on, and the hydrant failures, the bad press, a code violation could shut the place down. “The homeless, you leave that gate open, they defecate all over the alley.”

  “It just makes me nervous, that’s all.”

  “I don’t like their shit in the alley.”

  “The old Chinaman—he has a key….”

  “He keeps the alley clean.”

  “So you let him sleep there in return?”

  The man was uncomfortable. Dante took out his wallet and put some money on the counter.

  “You must have another copy.”

  “What do you want it for?”

  “In case of an emergency. I’ll just sleep a little better, if I know there’s another way out.”

  Dante smiled. The clerk looked at the money.

  In reality, Dante wasn’t worried about fire. Rather he was looking ahead, in the event he returned to the hotel and needed a quick avenue out. In a pinch, he could climb the escapes at the end of the blind, but the gate would be better.

  The clerk took the cash and reached under the counter. The Russian handed him the key, and Dante had a premonition then, or something like a premonition: a feeling, similar to the one earlier—as if he had been here before. As if he were looking at himself from some other point in time.

  But it was an illusion. He was here now, alive. The room was full of Buddhas. On the other side of the counter, the Russian grinned unpleasantly.

  “I’ll be back,” Dante said.

  Then he pushed outside, through the door, into the unceasing noise.

  THIRTY-TWO

  Nelson Yin had habits, predictable to a degree. So far as Dante could tell, Yin left the Benevolent Association after work at almost the same time every afternoon, at which point he would go in one of two directions: either to the garage underneath Plymouth Square, or to the Golden Dragon. If he went to the garage, this meant Yin would be driving home in his blue Nissan, to his wife and family on the peninsula. If he walked the other way, toward the Dragon, he would linger there for an hour or so, drinking and dining with his associates. On those days, he returned afterward into the upper reaches of the building.

  Dante sat in a restaurant across the way, in a window booth that offered a view of the Benevolent Association, waiting for Yin to emerge. No one seemed to be paying any mind. Dante knew how to blend in, so that people who looked at him, they did not think twice. He had become skilled at this during his days with the company. This invisibility was a little more difficult close to home. Then, too, there was the matter of his nose. The fisherman face of his grandfather, beak like a pelican, a knife edge for gutting the belly of a fish. The family nose. Ridiculous. Too large for his face. It kept growing, after the rest of you stopped. And kept growing even in the grave.

  He sat in the window, the newspaper in front of him, a cup of tea, noodles with watery broth and gristled meat.

  Finally Nelson Yin appeared.

  Yin hesitated on the sidewalk, as if he himself did not know which of the two ways he intended to go. It would be best, so far as Dante was concerned, if Yin headed home—if he stepped into the crosswalk and tramped toward his car in the garage beneath the square. Then Yin would not get in the way, and Dante would have just a little more time.

  Yin strutted instead to the Golden Dragon.

  Dante finished his tea. Then he gathered his satchel, with the canister inside, and ambled across the road.

  Dante could not gain access to the upper floors through the Wus’ lobby. There was too much security. So for Dante, the only way up lay through the Golden Dragon. The restaurant sprawled on the ground floor of the Empress Building, an ornate place with an intricate floor plan, full of crooks and turns, booths with high walls and backroom tables, areas within areas, separated one from the other by painted screens. At the back, near the kitchen, a staircase rose to the upper floors, but even then access would not be easy.

  Yin had entered before him and already joined another party: two men who sat drinking at a table on the far side. At least Dante would not have to walk past Yin to get to the stairs.

  The hostess was dressed in silk with gold leaf.

  “A booth, please,” Dante said. “On this side.”

  The hostess studied Dante and the small canvas sack in his hand, but there was nothing remarkable about the sack itself, or about his presence, other than the fact he did not much resemble their usual clientele.

  “You are only one person. The counter would be better.”

  “I have more coming.”

  “Reservations?”

  “No, I’m sorry.”

  “Let me check what’s available.”

  Dante listened to the murmur of the place, the after-work crowd, tired people growing animated with food and drink: Chinese real estate agents and money-traders, clerks and chiropractors, dental technicians and legal aides. Some of them rented space in the building and did business with the Wus, but the lines between legitmate business and not-so legitimate, these were always murky.

  The hostess put down her list. “How many?”

  “Four. Plus me.”

  She frowned. “One minute.”

  A man at Yin’s table gave a glance in his direction, but it was cursory, meaningless, and Yin himself faced the other direction. Dante did not wait for the hostess to return. He headed toward the kitchen, then turned at the half wall, past the restrooms, toward the stairs. He had been in the Dragon years ago, and the fundamental layout had not changed. At the top, the stairs opened into an adjacent structure that had been added to the original building in the twenties, and from there he could make his way over. The stairs were carpeted, and pictures had been hung along the wall: pigtailed men in front of the Chinatown Mercantile; a Chinese crooner; still shots from the Chinese parade; men in business suits, men like Nelson Yin, harmless on the surface of it, pudgy at the middle, bland smiles, colorless eyes.

  Halfway up, Dante pulled the canister from the satchel. He could see down over the half wall into the restaurant, where the hostess moved in her gold leaf and the patrons leaned over their drinks, and he could hear, too, the clatter of dishes and the murmur of the customers over their plates. He held the canister between his hands. Except for the mechanism at the top, the small pull-ring and the chain, it was an unremarkable canister, of the type that might be mistaken for a quart of paint or a tin of tomatoes. The can, of course, contained neither of
these things. Rather it contained the white phosphorus, a chemical composition that ignited with exposure to air.

  Dante hesitated. There was no guarantee Ru Shen’s journal was in the building. Even if he meant to go upstairs, this distraction he was about to create might cause the opposite effect. Instead of buying time, he would draw attention. There could be unintended consequences, but he had been over this already.

  He pulled the ring.

  Then he tossed the device underhand, a single, easy motion, as if throwing a softball at a family gathering. The canister bounced once at the bottom of the stairs; then it went off, the phosphorus catching fire as the can burst open, a brilliant yellow flame. The smoke came pouring out, a thick white smoke that billowed from the can and kept on billowing. Dante spun toward the door at the top of the stairs. Meanwhile, the smoke filled the room behind him. He could hear people bolt for the exits, gagging and hollering. The alarm was ringing, and in another instant, the elevators would shut down. As Dante headed up, workers from the uppers floors brushed past him on the staircase, coming from the opposite direction, hurrying down.

  THIRTY-THREE

  The Empress was not one building but several, its wings built at different times, intertwined and honeycombed with passages. The staircase up from the Dragon went past the fifth floor, then ended abruptly, halfway up the next flight, in a blank wall. Dante had hoped to take it all the way up, then cross over to the Benevolent Association, but the staircase was sealed, apparently, to secure the upper floors. Down a landing, back the other way, down a passage leading to the Association, he encountered a locked door. So he went down a short corridor, to the corner where the buildings joined. Outside the window there was a maintenance ladder embedded in the stone, giving access to the roof. A few days before, on surveillance, Dante had seen the ladder from beneath and now stared down the long shaft in the other direction, at two men loading vegetables onto a sidewalk lift far below. The men did not look up. Dante hoisted himself onto the window ledge, grabbed the nearest rung, and climbed hand over hand on the iron bars until he reached the next floor.

  He swung awkwardly across the chasm.

  Yin’s office was down the hall, unoccupied. The floor had been abandoned. The main elevator was shut down, on account of the alarms. The cargo lift to the top floor, however, still operated, creaky and slow as it might be, chiming steadily as he rode up, then chiming once more, louder, more definitively, when the lift bumped to a stop. He jammed the lift door behind him, propping it open, so the lift could not be called from below. He did not want anyone to follow.

  A hall led away from the lift, a nondescript passage, olive-colored walls lined with shelving, household goods, all labeled in Chinese: bags of rice, paper towels, boxes of hard candy, medical supplies, catheters, a bundle of adult diapers. The alarm was still audible, though only faintly, ringing many stories below. The hall had a sour smell, more pronounced as he continued on. He heard, too, a whirring nose, as of an electronic device, like a motor turning. The old woman appeared then, in her wheelchair at the other end of the hall, wearing a silk robe that hung loosely, too loosely, so he could see, the closer she came, parts of her anatomy he did not necessarily want to see. She lifted her hand from the controls, and the machine halted sideways in the corridor. The old woman squinted at him as he approached. She regarded him with skepticism but no particular fear. An oxygen bottle dangled at the side of the wheelchair, poorly attached, and tubing ran from the bottle to a mask that hung from the old woman’s chin.

  “There’s a fire downstairs,” he said.

  “Nelson sent you?”

  Dante said nothing.

  “Nelson called. Not me, of course, the other one, his sweetie. He told us to stay put. He would come himself. But they are not letting anyone into the building.”

  “That’s wise.”

  “But you got by.”

  “I did.”

  “Nelson sent you?”

  “Yes.”

  The woman grunted. She nodded toward a cluster of portable tanks jammed up against the shelving. Her manner suggested she was used to giving instructions, and also to being obeyed.

  “I need a tank. This one’s almost empty.”

  Dante picked up one of the oxygen bottles and followed her into the main apartment. Close by, next to the old woman, the smell reminded him of the smell of his room, back at the nameless hotel, only more pungent. The woman appeared to be in the midst of some project. The table spilled over with magazines, catalogs, old books, and the floor nearby was littered with torn paper. Whatever she was doing, she resumed now. She picked some scissors from the pocket of her wheelchair, cutting and jagging along the edges of a colored picture. Dante set the tank down. He could see from the gauge that the current tank was running low, and he could also see that the woman was short of breath, but despite her trouble breathing, she handled the scissors with a singular ferocity, and it looked as if she had been at it for some time. The trail of torn paper led back across the floor to a cluttered alcove. A door stood open farther on, and on the other side, Dante could hear the sound of a younger woman, humming, moving about, pushing hangers in a closet. Her footsteps approached, then moved away, padded, soft, unhurried.

  “She thinks she’s somebody else, my nurse. Or so she would like to think. It is the trouble with young women.” The old woman bent over her work as she spoke, so it was unclear to him whether she was speaking to him or to one of the people in her colored picture. It was a singsong voice, make-believe, such as that of a mother addressing her children, or a child speaking with paper dolls. As she continued, her English trailed into Chinese. The padded footsteps came closer now, without warning. Then the young nurse stepped around the corner.

  Dante’s brow was sweaty with the exertion, his body damp, his clothes disarranged. In some ways, he did not much resemble the figure who’d appeared in Yin’s office several days before, but he saw immediately that the nurse recognized him, as he did her. She looked into his face, at the large nose, and her expression was the same as it had been that day in the lobby, only now mixed with her disdain and her porcelain beauty, there was a touch of fear. The fear, it widened her eyes, and this widening, it made her more beautiful. She wore the same cheongsam blouse, and her face had been carefully made up. She carried with her the scent of perfume, a tincture of lilac.

  “Nelson sent me,” he said.

  The old woman barked in Chinese. From the way the nurse reacted, and the glance between them, Dante guessed the old woman had said something about his presence. The old woman was mad, no doubt, but only half-mad, not so gullible as she seemed. She was shrewd, a little shaky but strong in the upper arms, the way she spun the wheelchair about all of a sudden.

  “Air!” she demanded.

  Dante nodded his OK, giving permission for the nurse to help the woman, but at the same time put his hands on his hips in a manner that let her see the holster under his jacket. In this way, this gesture, he was not so different from his friend Angelo. Or from Chin.

  “You do not come here to help us,” said the old woman.

  “This is your library?” He nodded toward the alcove.

  “You do not work for Nelson,” the old woman said. “You are not police. You are not fire.”

  “There is a journal, by a man named Ru Shen.”

  The young woman took a step backward, the slightest step. His guess, the nurse was not American-born Chinese. Unlike Yin, she spoke both languages, same as the old woman.

  “The things back there, they are from the old days.” The old woman glanced at the trail of paper along the floor that led to the darkened alcove. Her glance was not without longing. On the table closer by were stacks of magazines from the new China. “But there is a fashion industry in China,” the old woman said. “Many new things. Someone has to keep track.”

  Though it was midday, the chambers were dim and cloistered. The balcony doors were shuttered, with the blinds at half-slant, and there was no breeze. From
what he could see, the old woman slept in the room in which they stood, on an adjustable bed in the corner, and there was a small kitchen beyond. The remaining room, from which the nurse had emerged, just past the alcove, was nicer, more carefully furnished, sparser: A large bed stood at the center of the far wall, covered with an intricate silk spread. This room had its own bathroom and an armoire and a vanity against the other wall. Like the young woman, the room smelled as if it had been tinctured with lilac.

  Dante stood on the threshold of that room. There was a door at the far end. He would have thought it a closet, except for a dead bolt that latched from the inside.

  He unlatched the bolt and peered down a flight of stairs into the darkness.

  “What’s this?”

  “For emergency.”

  Like the others, the nurse did not look at him when he spoke. Maybe because she was lying or maybe out of habit. Because a woman in Chinatown did not meet the eyes of a white man passing on the street, let alone those of a stranger appearing in her bedroom.

  “Where does it go?”

  “No one uses it anymore.”

  Dante remembered the sound of her footsteps ascending behind the wall of Yin’s office. He had a pretty good idea where those stairs originated. Dante studied her carefully made-up face. Though her eyes darted away, he studied it anyway. He did not want to get rough with her, but there was only so much time. On the floor, a pair of men’s shoes sat by the armoire. He walked back over to where she stood, there on the threshold.

  “Lock the wheels,” said Dante.