A Soft Barren Aftershock

by F. Paul Wilson

  Jack saw his eyes bulge with shock and pain as he pitched toward the floor. Probably felt like he’d been hit with a cinder block. As he landed face first, Loretta stayed on him—really on him. She jumped, landing knees first on the middle of his back . . . like Gamera on Barugon. The air rushed out of him with an agonized groan as his ribs shattered like glass.

  But Loretta wasn’t finished. Shouting, she started slamming the rock-hard container against his head and neck, matching the rhythm of her words to the blows.

  “NOW you ain’t NEVER pointin NO gun to MY head EVER aGAIN!”

  Jack moved up beside her and touched her arm.

  “Hey, Lo? Lo! Loretta barada nikto.”

  She looked up at him. “Huh?”

  “I think he’s got the message.”

  She looked back down at Pepe. His face was flattened against the floor, his head canted at an unnatural angle. He wasn’t breathing.

  She nodded. “I do believe you right.”

  Jack pulled her to her feet and pushed her toward the front.

  “Go!”

  But Loretta wasn’t finished. She turned and kicked Pepe in the ribs.

  “Told you I was a bitch!”

  “Loretta—come on!”

  As they hustled toward the front she said, “We even, Jack?”

  “Even Steven.”

  “Did I happen to mention my bad mood?”

  “Yes, you did, Loretta. But sometimes a bad mood can be a good thing.”

  SEX SLAVES OF THE DRAGON TONG

  “You’ll find my Margot, won’t you?” Mr. Kachmar said. “Please?”

  Detective Third Grade Brad Brannigan felt the weight of the portly man’s imploring gaze as Chief Hanrahan ushered him out of his office.

  “Of course he will,” the chief told him. “He’s one of our best men.”

  Brannigan smiled and nodded with a confidence as false as the chief’s words. He was baffled as to why he, the greenest detective in the San Francisco PD, had been called in on this of all cases.

  When the door finally closed, sealing out Mr. Kachmar, the chief turned and exhaled through puffed cheeks.

  “Lord preserve us from friends of the mayor with wayward daughters, aye, Brannigan?”

  As Hanrahan dropped into the creaking chair behind his desk, Brannigan searched for a response.

  “I appreciate the compliment, Chief, but we both know I’m not one of your best men.”

  The chief smiled. “That we do, lad. That we do.”

  “Then why—?”

  “Because I’ll be knowing about Margot Kachmar and she’s a bit of a hellion. Twenty years old and not a thought in her head about anyone but herself. Probably found a fellow she sparked to and went off with him on a lark.

  Wouldn’t be the first time.”

  “But her father looked so worried.”

  “I’d be worried too if I had a daughter like that. Kachmar has only himself to blame. Rich folks like him give their kids too long a leash. Make it tough for the rest of us. You should hear my own daughter.” He mimicked a young woman’s voice. “ ‘This isn’t the dark ages, Daddy. It’s nineteen thirty-eight.’ ” He huffed and returned to his normal tone. “I wouldn’t care if it was nineteen fifty-eight, you’ve got to be after watching your daughters every single minute. Watching ’em like a hawk.”

  While trying his best to look interested in the chief’s domestic philosophy, Brannigan cut in as soon as he had a chance.

  “Where was she last seen?”

  “Washington and Grant.”

  “Chinatown?”

  “At least that’s what her girlfriend says.” Hanrahan winked. “Covering for her, I’ll bet. You give that one a bit of hard questioning and she’ll be coming around.”

  “But Chinatown is . . .”

  “Yes, Sorenson’s beat. But I can’t very well be asking him to look into it, can I.”

  Of course he couldn’t. Sorenson was laid up in the hospital with some strange malady.

  “And,” Chief Hanrahan added, “I can’t very well be pulling my best men off other cases and sending them to No-tickee-no-shirtee-ville to question a bunch of coolies about some young doxy who’ll show up on her own in a day or two. So you’re getting the nod, Detective Brannigan.”

  Brad felt heat in his cheeks and knew they were reddening. For a fair-skinned redhead like him, a blush was always waiting in the wings, ready to prance onstage at an instant’s notice.

  The chief’s meaning was clear: I don’t want to waste someone useful, so you take it.

  Brad repressed a dismayed sigh. He knew this was because of the Jenkins case. Missing a vital clue had left him looking like an amateur. As a result the rest of the detectives at the station had had weeks of fun at his expense. But though the razzing was over, Chief Hanrahan still hadn’t assigned him to anything meaty. Brannigan wound up with the leftovers. If he didn’t get some arrests to his credit he’d never make second grade.

  Stop feeling sorry for yourself, he thought. Your day will come. It just won’t be today.

  Brannigan took the chief’s suggestion and called on Margot’s friend Katy Webber for a few answers. Katy lived in her parents’ home, a stone mansion in Pacific Heights.

  Five minutes with her were all it took to convince him that she wasn’t covering for Margot. She was too upset.

  “One moment she was with me,” she said through her tears, “and the next minute she wasn’t! I turned to look in a jewelry store window—that was why we went there, to look for some jade—and when I turned back to point out a necklace, she was gone!”

  “And you didn’t see anyone suspicious hanging about? No one following you?”

  “Not that I noticed. And Margot never mentioned seeing anyone. The streets were crowded with people and cars and . . . I don’t understand how she could have disappeared like that.”

  Neither did Brannigan. “You must have seen something.”

  “Well . . .”

  “What?”

  “It might be nothing, but I saw this black car pulling away and I thought . . .” She shook her head. “I thought I saw the back of a blond head through the rear window.”

  “Margot’s head?”

  Katy shrugged and looked miserable. “I don’t know. It was just a glimpse and then the car turned the corner.”

  “Do you remember the license plate? The make? The model?”

  Katy responded to each question with a shake of her head. “I don’t know cars. I did notice that it had four doors, but beyond that . . .”

  Swell, Brannigan thought. A black sedan. San Francisco had thousands and thousands of them.

  But Katy’s story convinced him that someone had kidnapped Margot Kachmar. In broad daylight to boot. He’d start where she was last seen, at Washington and Grant, and move out from there.

  But he’d move on his own. This was his chance to get himself out of Dutch with the chief, so he’d keep it to himself for now. If Hanrahan got wind that this was a real kidnapping, he’d pull Brannigan and put someone else on it sure.

  Someone in that area of Chinatown had to remember something. All he needed to do was ask the right person. And that meant his next step was good old-fashioned door-to-door detective work.

  “Wah!” Yu Chaoyang cried. “Slow the car!”

  Jiang Zhifu looked around, startled. He and Yu occupied the back of one of the black Packard sedans owned by Yan Yuap Tong. An underling Yu had brought from Singapore sat behind the wheel. All three wore identical black cotton outfits with high collars and frog-buttoned fronts, although Yu’s large girth required twice as much fabric as Jiang’s; each jacket was embroidered with a golden dragon over the left breast; each man wore his hair woven into a braid that dangled from beneath a traditional black skullcap.

  “What is wrong?” Jiang said as the car slowed almost to a stop.

  “Nothing is wrong, my tong brother. In fact, something is very right.” A chubby finger pointed toward the sidewalk. “Look and marv
el.”

  Jiang peered through the side window glass and saw a typical Chinatown scene: pushcarts laden with fruits and vegetables, fish live and dead, fluttering caged birds and roasted ducks; weaving among them was the usual throng of shoppers, a mix of locals and tourists.

  Yu had come to America just last month on a mission for his father, head of the Yan Yuap Tong’s house in Singapore; Jiang had volunteered to guide him through the odd ways of this strange country.

  Yu was proving to be a trial. Arrogant and headstrong, he did not give proper face to his tong brothers here in San Francisco. Some of that might be anticipated from the son of a tong chief from home, but Yu went beyond proper bounds. No one expected him to kowtow, but he should show more respect.

  “I don’t understand,” Jiang said.

  Yu turned to face him. He ran a long sinuous tongue over his lips, brushing his thin drooping mustache in the process. His smile narrowed further his puffy lids until they were mere slits through which his onyx eyes gleamed.

  “Red hair! Red hair!”

  Jiang looked again and saw a little girl, no more than ten years old, standing by a cart, looking at a cage full of sparrows. She wore a red dress with white trim; but her unruly hair was even redder: a bushy flame, flaring around her face like the corona of an eclipse.

  “Look at her.” Yu’s voice became a serpent, slithering through the car. “What a price I can fetch for her!”

  “But she’s a child.”

  “Yes! Precisely! I have a buyer in Singapore who specializes in children, and a red-haired child . . . aieee! He will pay anything for her!”

  Jiang’s stomach tightened. A child . . .

  “Are you forgetting the conditions set by the Mandarin?”

  “May maggots eat the eyes of your Mandarin!”

  Jiang couldn’t help a quick look around. He thanked his ancestors that the windows were closed. Someone might have heard.

  “Do not speak of him so! And do not even think of breaking your agreement with him!”

  Yu leaned closer. “Where do your loyalties lie, Jiang? With your tong, or with this mysterious Mandarin you all kowtow to?”

  “I am loyal to Yan Yuap, but I am also fond of my skin. And if you wish to keep yours, you will heed my warning. Those who oppose his will wind up dead or are never seen again.”

  “Eh-yeh!” Yu waved a dismissive hand. “By tomorrow night I will be at sea with this barbarous country far behind me.”

  “Yes. You will be gone, but I will still have to live here.”

  Yu grinned, showing mottled teeth, stained from his opium pipe. “That is not my worry.”

  “Do not be so sure. The Mandarin’s reach is long. He has never been known to break his word, and he has no mercy toward those who break theirs to him. I beg you not to do this.”

  The grin turned into a sneer. “America has softened you, Jiang. You shake like a frightened old woman.”

  Jiang looked away. This man was a fool. Yu had come to America for women—white women he could sell to the Singapore brothels. The lower level houses there and the streets around them were full of dolla-dolla girls shipped in from the farmlands. But the upper echelon salons that provided gambling as well as sex needed something special to bring in the high rollers. White women were one such draw. And blond white women were the ultimate lure.

  Since nothing in San Francisco’s Chinese underworld happened without the Mandarin’s consent—or without his receiving a share of the proceeds—Yu had needed prior approval of his plan. How he had raged at the ignominy of such an arrangement, but he had been persuaded that he would have no success without it.

  The Mandarin had set two conditions. First: take only one woman from San Francisco, all the rest from surrounding cities and towns. The second: no children. He did not care to weather a Lindbergh-style investigation.

  Jiang said, “We took a girl here only yesterday, and now a child from these same streets. You will be breaking both conditions with this act.”

  Yu smiled. “No, Jiang. We will be breaking them. We will watch and wait, and when the time is right, you will pluck this delicious little berry from her branch.”

  Jiang agonized as Yu had the driver circle the block again and again. Yes, he was a member of the Yan Yuap Tong, but he was also a member of a more powerful and far-flung society. And the Mandarin was one of its leaders. Jiang was the Mandarin’s eyes within the Yan Yuap Tong, and as such he would have to report this. Not that he would mind the slightest seeing the worst happen to Yu, but he prayed to his ancestors that the Mandarin wouldn’t make him pay too for his part in the transgression.

  “Wah!” Yu said. “She has turned the corner. There is no one about! Now! Now!”

  Fumes filled the car as Jiang poured chloroform onto a rag. He jumped out, the soft slap of his slippers on the pavement the only sign of his presence; he clamped the rag over the child’s face and was dragging her back toward the car’s open door when a ball of light brown fur darted across the sidewalk toward them. Jiang heard a growl of fury, saw bared fangs, and then the thing was upon him, tearing at the flesh of his arm.

  He cried out for help and received it in the report of a pistol. The dog yelped and tumbled backward to lie twitching on the sidewalk. The child’s wild struggles—she was a tough little one—slowed and ceased as the chloroform did its work. Jiang shoved her into the backseat between Yu and himself. The car lurched into motion. Jiang glanced back and saw a pool of blood forming around the head of the sandy-haired dog.

  He looked at the now unconscious child and saw Yu caressing one of her pale, bare thighs.

  “Ah, my little quail,” he cooed, “I would so like to use the trip home to teach you the thousand ways to please a man, but alas you must remain a virgin if I am to take full profit from you.”

  Jiang closed his eyes and trembled inside. He had to tell the Mandarin of this. He prayed he’d survive the meeting.

  “I’ve run into a blank wall,” Brannigan said.

  “And so you’ve come to me for help.”

  Looking at Detective Sergeant Hank Sorenson now, Brannigan wished he’d gone elsewhere.

  He’d had a nodding acquaintance with Sorenson at the station, but the figure pressed between the sheets in the hospital bed before him was a caricature of the man Brannigan had known.

  He tried not to stare at the sunken cheeks, the glassy, feverish eyes, the sallow, sweaty skin as pale as his hospital gown. The slow smile that stretched Sorenson’s lips and bared his teeth was ghastly.

  “You mean to tell me you walked up to Chinatown residents and asked them what they saw?”

  The whole afternoon had been a frustrating progression of singsong syllables, expressionless yellow faces with gleaming slanted eyes that told him nothing.

  “I didn’t see that I had any other option.”

  “You can’t treat chinks like regular people, Brad. You can’t ask them a direct question. They’re devious, crafty, always circling.”

  Brannigan bristled at Sorenson’s attitude, like a teacher chiding a student for not knowing his lesson.

  “Well, be that as it may, no one saw anything.”

  Sorenson barked a phlegmy laugh. “Oh, they saw all right. They’re just not going to tell an outsider. Not if they know what’s good for them.”

  “What’s that mean?”

  “The Mandarin. You do not cross the Mandarin.”

  Sorenson went on to explain about Chinatown’s lord of crime. Then he added, “If this Kachmar girl is a blond, you might be dealing with a white slave ring. The Yan Yuap Tong—also called the Dragon Tong because their symbol is a dragon—has been involved in that before. The tongsters probably have your missing girl’s photo on its way back to Singapore already, to get the bidding started.”

  Brannigan had heard of Oriental rings that abducted white women for sex slaves, but he’d never expected that Margot Kachmar—

  “Check Oakland and Marin and maybe San Jose,” Sorenson was saying. “See
if they’ve had a blonde or two gone missing recently.”

  “Why there?”

  “Because police departments don’t communicate nearly enough. Someday they will, but with things as they are, spreading out the abductions lessens the chances of anyone spotting a pattern.”

  Oakland . . . San Jose . . . that seemed like a lot of legwork with slim chance of turning up anything useful.

  “Why don’t I go straight to the source? This Mandarin character . . . where do I find him?”

  Sorenson began to shake with ague. His head fell back on the pillow. When the tremors eased . . .

  “No one knows. He hides his identity even from his fellow Chinese. Just as well—you don’t want to find him. I came close and look what it got me.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  “I was homing in on the Mandarin’s identity, getting closer than anyone before me, and then, a week ago, something got into my house and bit me.”

  “Something?”

  “A giant millipede, bright red, at least eight inches long, crawled into my bed and bit me on the shoulder. I managed to smash it with a shoe as it raced away, but only got the back half. The front half broke off and escaped. Bug scientists over at the university say it only exists in Borneo.”

  “But what’s that got to do—?”

  “It was put in my house, you idiot!” Sorenson snapped, a faint tinge of color seeping into his cheeks. “By one of the Mandarin’s men. And look what it’s done to me!”

  He pulled the hospital gown off his left shoulder to reveal a damp dressing. He ripped that off.

  “It’s due for a change anyway. Have a look.”

  Brannigan saw an ulcerated crater perhaps two inches across penetrating deep into the flesh of Sorenson’s shoulder. Its base was red and bloody. A quick look was more than enough for Brannigan, but as he was turning away he thought he saw something move within the bloody fluid. He looked again—