by Rhys Ford
As soon as he walked into the middle of the lobby, he swore at the empty chicken wire cage because the damned attendant was nowhere to be seen.
“Man went to make sure the lock worked,” an old man called out in a raspy whisper from his spot in front of the window. “Rooms are better on the second floor. I’m in the spot right next to you. Hope I don’t keep you up some nights. Got a couple of lady friends I roll in and out of the place every once in a while. One of them is a real screamer. Shouldn’t hear anything, though. Walls thick enough a man could be murdered in his own room and no one would hear a thing.”
“Probably why Louie likes having me rent here,” Spencer retorted.
Spencer hoisted the heavy duffel bags over his shoulders. He walked over to join the old man by the window, nodding a brief hello when he sat down in the now-empty other armchair. He’d seen the man before, a hard-ridden elderly black man with more than a hint of the Delta in his voice. Up close, his face was a mass of wrinkles, speckles of white beard bristling over his jaw, running up to his pate and ringing around the back of his skull with a whispery thin brush of snowy short hair. Dressed in an old brown suit from the ’50s about three sizes too large and a size too short, the man’s bony wrists shot out from under his tan dress shirt every time he moved, his gnarled fingers gesturing as he spoke. His knuckles were pink and swollen, the tips of his index finger and thumb yellowed from years of clenching a cigarette. His teeth were the same color as the walls, except for one of his canines, which gleamed with a hint of gold from the band at its root.
“Your name’s Ricci, right? Louie said you are one of those Eye-talian cops from back East. Told him he was full of shit because you sound like you’re from California,” the old man grumbled, jerking his right hand out for Spencer to shake. “Name’s Joe Thompson, but most folks call me Buttons. You need anything, you just come and knock on my door. Buttons will always take care of you.”
“I appreciate that. Louie’s the guy behind the counter?” Spencer shifted in the armchair, regretting that decision immediately when a wave of dust rose up from its seat. “I hope he comes back soon because I just need to get some sleep.”
“Heard you got that mummy thing they found over at the Greek place.” Buttons coughed out a low chuckle when Spencer frowned at him. “Not much goes on in a ten-block radius of this place that I don’t know about. Sometimes it’s even twenty. That’s some crazy shit you stepped in. Got anybody you’re looking at? Because if you don’t, I might know somebody to talk to.”
Eyeing the old man, Spencer snorted, then shook his head. “I’ve got enough on my plate without having to talk to some guy who thinks he knows about mummies, Buttons.”
“Guy’s a woman, and she might have a few nuts loose up in her braincase, but she’s got plenty smarts rattling around in there too,” Buttons retorted, leaning forward and fumbling at his coat until he pulled out a packet of slightly crumpled cigarettes from his pocket. Shaking one out, he captured the filterless smoke between his pinched fingers and brought it up to his lips, trembling as he blew a piece of loose tobacco leaf from its end. “Like I said, ain’t nothing that happens around these blocks without me finding out about it. And Miss Lily can tell you a few things about another wrapped-up man she saw a few weeks ago, one the cops never set eyes on. Or at least, no one’s talking about it.”
The ache still lingered in his thighs and back, and while his eyes burned from lack of sleep, Spencer felt a rush of adrenaline zip through his blood. Leaning forward, he asked, “If someone saw something, why didn’t they call the cops?”
“Because people like Miss Lily keep their mouths shut. The world doesn’t exactly like those that don’t have a lot of money to their name. I can tell you where to find her in most mornings, but you might want to take some gift cards with you. Fast food cards, you know the kind. She’ll be happy to tell you everything she’s seen.” Buttons’ fingers were still shaking, but he was steady enough to light his cigarette, cupping his hand around the flame he finally sparked off a grimy plastic lighter. “I didn’t think anything about what she told me until I heard about that man you all found. And then a couple of things clicked, so I told Louie to give us a couple minutes peace. See, Miss Lily didn’t just see someone like you all found the other day. She also saw the man who dumped his wrapped-up ass into the water.”
§
Spencer’s demons drove him out of Los Angeles, and they gleefully fueled the fires of insomnia, sending him out into the damp early-morning darkness of San Francisco’s tangled streets. His mind couldn’t find a place to rest even as his body luxuriated in the feel of a new soft mattress and the slight stink of fresh paint on the surrounding walls. With his thoughts circling back to the long-lashed mysterious coroner who unknowingly tugged out Spencer’s long-buried libido, the restaurant mummy and a transient named Miss Lilly soon tossed an icy sluice over any heated thoughts he might have had about Dr. Xian Carter.
He didn’t know what he thought he could accomplish at four in the morning, but that didn’t seem to bother his overactive brain. Walking aimlessly after parking his car in a lot seemed to do the trick, but the chill from the rolling fog crept into Spencer’s bones, sliding under his leather jacket and through his jeans, bringing a shiver to his skin. He couldn’t guess how far he’d gone, only that his hair was damp, clinging to his cheekbones, and his stomach growled from being neglected. Dinner hadn’t happened, and the two tacos he’d ground through at some point the day before were long gone, leaving Spencer with a growling pit.
“Food. That’ll be good,” he mumbled, shoving his hands into his pockets. His holster shifted across his back when he turned to tackle one of the city’s steeper hills, the weight of his service piece resting firmly against his side. “Dumpling place is around here somewhere. They’re open.”
The smell of fried shrimp and char siu bao left a tantalizing aromatic trail, and Spencer sniffed his way through the tight streets, carefully avoiding a rickety garbage truck trying to navigate a tight corner. Chinatown was always a struggle, a blur of changing signs amid embedded landmarks with a confusing maze of side streets and alleys suddenly ending into the sides of buildings.
“Feng shui, my ass. What the hell was in the water when they were laying down these streets?” He’d taken a wrong turn… somehow. The flamboyantly painted old tearoom was nearby, but it might as well have been five miles away for all Spencer could find it. “Seriously, damned place is next to a freaking park on a steep hill. How the hell can I lose that?”
A beeping garbage truck’s rumbling scrambled any sense of direction he’d carved out of his head, and not for the first time since he’d left Los Angeles, he wondered if he’d made a tragic mistake moving up to San Francisco. Turning around, he stopped for a long moment and let his head fall back, breathing in the heavily scented air swirling around him.
He liked the faded, worn corners of Chinatown, with its blinking lights and rain-beaten dulled hues. Behind the duct-taped wrap of tourist traps and flashy promises of cheap goods, he enjoyed rooting out the area’s hidden folds, the secret nooks and crevices of a maze of streets where people lived stacked on top of their family history and the smattering of customs so far from his own Italian roots. Spencer appreciated the suspicion most Chinatown locals had for cops and the silent treatment he would often get until he massaged his way with a bit of understanding about how things were.
That’s what old neighborhoods always came down to—how things were between what happened, how no one saw anything, and the underlying current of knowing that somewhere, someone who could do something about things was eventually going to reach out and deal with the situation. Even if Spencer swore to uphold the law and honor his badge, there were times when he knew in his bones he was never going to find out who did the deed because someone else would step in. Someone unseen and silent.
Much like his own uncles had back in Los Angeles. Before things went to shit and he’d been forced to choose his badge over blood
.
“Yeah, San Francisco was probably a good move,” he reassured himself, drinking in the redolent breeze. “No Ricci is ever going to welcome me back with open arms. Not unless there’s a knife in their hands. Food first, then I’ll take a crack at finding Miss Lily.”
The maze seemed to unravel, and Spencer found himself below the tearoom somehow, staring up the steep hill from nearly half a block away. Sighing, he contemplated his choices, but his stomach growled at the thought of steel dishes filled with cheong fun and lo mai gai. His thighs already ached from the rounds he’d made across the district, but his belly seemed to be the only part of his body with a vote.
“Getting old, Ricci.” He stopped at the intersection to look down Grant, checking for any traffic other than a battered produce truck edging into a double park in front of a Chinese restaurant established when dinosaurs walked the Earth. “Walking’s good for you. Burns off the calories after you’re done choking on the chili crispies you think you can handle.”
The case pressed against his thoughts as he made his way up the street. Between waiting for Carter to send him the final autopsy report and if what they’d seen was actually a wallet, he pondered what to do about Johnson. As a partner, she was a non-starter, drifting about on the scenes like a hungry gull, snapping at anything remotely looking like a clue. The past few days of skipping some shifts and smelling of booze wore Spencer’s nerves to a thin thread. He knew those times, marinated in them to the point of nearly breaking his life in half, and climbing out of that hole was hard.
“Probably should talk to the captain,” he ground out between his clenched teeth. The decision grated hard, raking open scabbed-over wounds he thought long healed. The bitter betrayal of his partner going to their captain still stung, and he didn’t feel right doing the same to Johnson. “Fuck. Right thing to do, but I should have her back. Maybe talk to her first.”
Either way, she was going to push back, deny everything. Stonewall, then get angry if Spencer pushed harder. He’d done that too, even going so far as to lash out with his fists when confronted one time too many. His knuckles still ached at the memory of punching his best friend—his former best friend—and then discovering there were no words he could find to wash away the blood he’d spilled.
Dumb mistakes were often realized a split second after their consequences hit. The moment Spencer saw the thick shadows shift after passing the church on Waverly, he cursed his own stupidity and fought to get his hands out of his jacket pockets. Damn the cold, he needed to be able to reach his weapon was the thought coursing through his adrenaline-heightened brain just as he felt the hot burning cramp of a knife slicing straight into him, then a rush of wetness spreading across his belly.
The heated iron of his own blood struck Spencer’s senses, a wavering metallic slap in his nostrils, then a spiderweb of growing pain spinning over his skin and down into his bones. His gun felt heavy in his hand, his palm slick with blood, and Spencer staggered, rocking with another blow of the knife into his side.
His attacker’s foul breath overwhelmed even the smell of Spencer’s gushing blood. A massive hand grabbed at his throat, twisting into his collar, and then Spencer was jerked off his feet, pulled toward the ground. Knuckles barking against a line of rough cement as he fell, Spencer kicked up, scoring a hit on something soft.
The man’s eyes were wild, numb from pain but enraged by something Spencer couldn’t understand, probably never would understand. Filth clung to every crevice of his face, filling deep scars gouging his cheeks from healed-over acne and slathering grime over a few lesions picked at on his left cheek. His hair dangled down in tangled hanks, its color dimmed beneath the sparse light. The shadows flicked and danced over the crazed man’s uneven features. It slimed over the black stumps of his teeth when the man turned toward the single source of light in the darkened corner, the inconstant pop and sizzle of a construction lamp left burning on the far side of the torn-apart, fenced-in park.
Spencer took the distraction as a gift from God, pulling his gun up and squeezing down on the trigger, aiming for the center of the man’s thick chest. Just in time to catch the edge of a dark, fleeting shadow barreling into his attacker, sending the large man tumbling backward into the chain-link fence a few feet away.
The percussive blast of his gun going off deafened Spencer, booming down into his eardrums and rattling his already drifting mind. Crackles of pain were spreading down over his limbs and up his ribs, choking his throat closed as he struggled to breathe. Evening seemed to be closing in on the light, strangling it back into nothingness, much like his thoughts were leaking from his grip.
Nothing was making sense. It had to be the loss of blood, or perhaps something was on the blade. Blinking, he caught flashes of a pale-haired man, a graceful slender apparition of the medical examiner gripping the knife-wielder by the throat and effortlessly lifting him up from the ground. There was no reason why Carter would be wandering Chinatown at four in the morning. Even less reasonable was Carter possessing the strength it would take to shake the overweight attacker until he dropped the knife.
“Losing my mind,” Spencer reassured himself, unable to wrap his mind around what was allegedly happening in front of him. Fumbling for his phone, he couldn’t take his eyes off the men grappling against the fence. “Gotta sit up. Call the…”
He saw Carter turn. His lips peeled back into a snarl, and then the kiss of light hit the man’s face, a beautiful, terrorizing sculpt of bone and flesh. His dark eyes burned, somehow shining with flecks of unseen stars, and his canines—Goddamn, his teeth!—shone ivory, stark horrors bristling in the man’s open mouth. Fear chased the lines of shadow on Spencer’s attacker’s face, and in a long, horrifying moment, Spencer watched as Carter clenched the back of the man’s neck until an audible pop creaked out.
Then those horrific fangs lowered in a flash, sinking into the assailant’s throat and ripping his skin apart with a jagged tear.
“Holy… fuck…” Spencer gasped, fighting to get up onto his feet. His elbows gave out before his side rippled with cascading punches of pain. He fell back onto the broken sidewalk, struggling to breathe around the fear in his chest. “Jesus!”
The smell of blood seemed to be everywhere, and his entire body was bathed in a dampness Spencer could only guess was fear, sweat, and his own guts spilling from the knife wounds along his side. Soft footsteps echoed near his head. Then those were drowned by the sound of sirens cutting through the constant murmur of a dozing Chinatown.
“I’d leave you here for the paramedics to take care of, but you’ll be dead soon, so… I guess I have no choice but to take you.” Carter’s hauntingly beautiful features loomed into Spencer’s tightening vision, blood splatters marbling his pale skin. “Besides, once I get you all fixed up, you can tell me why you’re walking around in Chinatown this late at night… and why the hell you shot me when I was trying to rescue you.”
Five
XIAN FELT THE early morning when it shifted, crackling tighter around his skin and flaring a metallic tint into the air. Something had changed. In between his left foot coming off the sidewalk and then touching the tar-ribboned street, danger of some sort bloomed, and he could hear it—taste it—all around him.
Chinatown stilled, its constant murmuring dulled down into an echoing hush. The rattle of a trash can being struck echoed through the area, followed by the scream of a cat angry at the world and the loss of its prey. Something deadlier moved through the side alleys, and even the hunched-over aunties scurried through to the hot kitchens they’d fled, slamming metal security doors behind them. A hot wind grabbed at the scraps of paper near Xian’s feet, swirling a cloud of mud-stained confetti around his shoulders before whipping down the length of the narrow passageway he normally used to get home after prowling through Chinatown’s gambling halls.
Tilting his head, Xian had listened, shifting with slow turns when he heard the faintest scuff of feet on wet cobblestones and a grunting explosion of
pain. There were words, indistinct and mumbled into a low river of noise, but the tautness of tone and the fear laced into the rising sounds were enough to spur Xian toward the South.
He’d clearly heard cop among the words and, even worse, a familiar husky velvet rasp he’d played over in his head time and time again since he’d last heard it… in the cold confines of his own operating arena when he unpeeled a desiccated limb from its salted bindings.
At four in the morning, the streets should have been stirring, yet there was no one about, just the echoes of ghosts playing at the corners of Xian’s vision, shadows left over from past events, reminding him of the dead. The cop—his cop—was somewhere nearby. He’d heard Spencer Ricci’s name among Chinatown’s whispers, and it sounded as if predators were circling their prey. Alarmingly, a gunshot rang out, its knock and boom slamming about the closed-in buildings, an echo carried down the district’s numb streets followed by a silence deep enough for Xian’s heart to sink into.
He’d begun running toward the echo… and found a nightmare unfolding.
A nightmare destined to never end if he didn’t get the cop someplace safe and patched up.
“Demon.” Another Chinatown whisper, this time in Cantonese and out of a niche in the wall. “I can help you.”
“For a price?” Xian cocked his head, not liking the sucking sounds coming from Spencer’s wounds. “Come out so I can see who I’m talking to.”
The woman who emerged from behind a creaking metal security gate had passed the point of age some time ago. Her spine curled over, almost folding her in half so her thinning white hair brushed the gate’s knob when she achingly stepped down a shallow step onto the tight walkway. Xian stepped back, giving her room to move, but she gripped the door’s handle, either for support or in fear.