City of Dragons (4 page)

Eddie. Think about Eddie Takahashi.

She walked inside, hoping to drown the words, but they chased her, cornered her near the chrysanthemum tea. Goddamn it, not New York, not Johnny, not now. Not now.

The grocer gave her a curious look. Song still playing, louder, filling the street.

Breathing hard, panic. Blind. Run from the store, run from the song, don’t think, don’t remember. Up the pavement, inside the herbalist without planning it, quieter, breathe. Look around.

There was a man inside, an old man. Angry. He stood over another old man, probably the herbalist.

You came, you saw, you conquered me …

The angry one looked up at her. His fist too close to the herbalist’s throat, hanging, suspended, finally falling to his side. Muttered something in Chinese. Pushed out the door past Miranda, bumping her shoulder.

These foolish things remind me of you …

Herbalist stared past her, eyes wide, still terrified. She backed out of the doorway, followed the other man. He walked up the hill with purpose, fury driving his legs forward, arms bent and fists again clenched. Turned down Waverly, too angry to notice her.

Miranda crossed the street and pretended to study the church façade, fingertips tracing the rough edges of bricks. No music. Song finally over.

She leaned back against the wall and lit a Chesterfield. Watched the old man walk through Waverly, past the barbershops, the gambling joints, associations, and whorehouses. Whorehouses always circled churches. Temptation and repent, cause and demand. Production for fucking use.

Tobacco hit her lungs, helping to calm her down. Temporary booths from the Rice Bowl street carnival stood silent, closed, waiting for the fortune-tellers and Chinese calligraphers to open one last time. He crossed Clay Street. She hesitated, then followed him, chasing a hunch.

Sharp right on Washington. Miranda walked faster to catch up. Too many shops that interconnected, too many honeycombs. Chinatown was built of opium, by opium, and for opium. Each little store, shop, bar, restaurant, and flophouse held a deep basement, forgotten attic, and plenty of corners no cop ever looked into.

He walked into Sam’s Restaurant, one of the narrowest in Chinatown. Two floors, both small, everyone watching everyone else. He could already be half a block away, using building-to-building routes the Chinese guarded like gold. She dropped the cigarette and rubbed it out on the pavement.

Headed for a bakery across the street, elbowing her way between a man with a briefcase and a teenage boy in high-waisted trousers trying to give her the eye. Pulled out fifteen cents, plunking it down on the counter, the harried waitress flinging a cup of tea at her. Miranda wiped up the spill with a napkin.

The tea leaves couldn’t tell her anything. Couldn’t explain why she was sitting at a scratched Formica counter, eating a sesame ball, looking for reasons for Eddie Takahashi. One more sesame ball, and the old man emerged, carrying a cloth bag of food. She shoved the fifteen cents toward the young girl behind the counter and the teenager’s hand off her knee and hurried out the door.

His walk was calmer. From Washington he turned left into Wentworth Alley. Miranda could smell it halfway up the block.

Fish scale covered the pavement. Smoked fish hung in cramped sidewalk stalls, old, crooked women haggling over price and digestibility. Not many fishmongers in Wentworth left, but it was still Salty Fish Alley to the locals.

She stepped around the worst of the fish guts, watching the old man hunch over a stripped-down apartment-house door. Younger man opened it. Handsome face. Sharp clothes, slick hair, looked like the front horn section for Tommy Dorsey. The old man barked something in Chinese, took off his hat, and pushed his way in.

She retreated across the street, taking out her notebook and another cigarette, making a note of the address: 36 Wentworth. Fuck the tea leaves.

Brick wall behind her was covered in handbills, some in Chinese, some in English, plenty of posters with the boy and the empty rice bowl next to BOYCOTT JAPAN signs. She watched the market, inhaling the Chesterfield. They lived up to their motto and satisfied, but only for fifteen minutes at a time.

A middle-aged man walked out of an acupuncture place across from number 36. He stood, hands behind his back, looking over the bargaining. Their eyes met. Miranda opened her purse and handed him a cigarette.

He smiled, surprised. Front two teeth were missing. He lit the Chesterfield with a pack of matches, took a drag, smiled again.

She gestured toward the apartment.

“Nice boy.”

He shook his head, brow wrinkled. She repeated it, made the gesture a little larger. He muttered to himself, casting around for meaning.

She gestured again. “Name?”

He patted her arm and went back inside, returning with a bored-looking middle-school kid wearing glasses and reading a
Detective
comic book. The kid peered up at her, still bored.

“You want something, lady?”

“Yeah. The name of the family who lives across the street. Old man and a younger one, good-looking.”

The acupuncture man looked from her to the boy. The kid translated in a monotone, barely looking up from the comic book. No sense showing him her detective license and disillusioning him.

The man was nodding again, speaking rapidly, smiling at her.

“My father says you must mean Kuan-Yin Li. His son is Fai Fen, but calls himself Frank Lee. Kuan-Yin Li owns the printing shop next door.” He pointed to a run-down, redbrick storefront next to the door of 36 Wentworth.

“Frank work there?”

The kid turned to his father, whose face got darker at the question. He inhaled again, coughed, shook his head.

“Father says Frank is no good. He works in a nightclub, spends too much money. Dishonors his father.”

Miranda wrote it down in the notebook. “Anyone else in the family? No mother?”

He turned to his father and she grabbed the boy’s sleeve. “Ask him if the family knows Eddie Takahashi.”

The Japanese name sounded harsh, invasive in the alley. The man stared at her, slower in response. Looked away, toward his right, and the wall covered in posters. The boy gave the report with an air of finality.

“Kuan-Yin Li’s wife died a few years ago. Fai Fen has been seen with many girls. People say there’s one he wants to marry.”

The kid looked up at her, curiosity mixed with self-importance. “Dad says he doesn’t know the name Eddie Takahashi. That’s Japanese.”

“Thanks.” She rummaged around, pulling out a change purse. “Here’s a quarter. Go buy yourself some more comic books.”

He accepted it as no more than his due, said something to his father, and went back inside the shop. The father looked at her, curious. Not quite as friendly.

She gave him two more Chesterfields, and he took them, hesitant, still avoiding her eyes. He bowed, and melted back into the dark, somber storefront. She looked up to the second story of 36 Wentworth. No laundry, no flowerpots. No music. No answers in Salty Fish Alley.

Three

M
iranda shrugged, and crushed the cigarette butt under her pump. Back to Sacramento, start again. She turned down Grant, and almost ran into one of the downtown beat cops.

“Well, well. Miranda Corbie.”

Red face on a short, stout neck. Doyle always reminded her of a bordello lamp. She tried to sidestep him. He extended a beefy arm out and held it against her shoulder.

“I hear you were at the Hall yesterday. As a witness.”

“Then your ears still work. Let me go.”

He leaned closer, all bad breath and stale beer.

“I hear a lot. I hear you rode Phil pretty hard. The lieutenant’s tryin’ to protect you. It’s good of him. Too good.”

She shrugged her shoulders. His arm stayed in place. She reached over with her right hand and flung it off.

“He can quit being a saint any goddamn time he wants. I don’t need the fucking missionary act, Doyle—from him, you, or anybody else.”

Miranda started to push past him when he grabbed her arm. “You should watch your mouth, leastways for your father’s sake. You talk like a tramp.”

“Get your goddamn hand off my arm.”

She was two paces down Grant when she heard his voice, lower, more careful.

“About this Takahashi mess.”

Miranda turned around, eyes wary. “What about it?”

He rubbed the end of nose. “Forget it. Orders, Miranda, and not just from Phil.”

They looked at each other. Doyle, with six kids and always one more on the way. And a Chinese girl down at the International Settlement every Friday night.

“You’ve done your duty. Go home to mama, tell him Miranda’s going to be a good girl from now on. Go on, Doyle. Drift.”

She waited until he crossed Washington, watching his fat back pulling against the dark wool coat. Strode away in the opposite direction, fast, welcoming the Chinese music and Benny Goodman that blared through various doorways. Bars and restaurants were already filling up, ready for the last party.

Her stomach growled, and she walked into Fong Fong, Chinatown’s best soda fountain. Miranda sat at the counter, next to a couple of teenage girls flirting with the soda jerk, checking their reflections in the mirror behind him, tapping their fingers on the milkshake cups.

She looked around and noticed some boys next to the jukebox. Cheap, flashy clothes. Small-time air of importance. Any of them could’ve been Eddie Takahashi. She watched them and ordered a chop suey sundae.

One of the sharpies fed the box, and Martha Tilton crooned “And the Angels Sing.” The two girls next to her looked away from the soda jerk and over to where the bad boys were. Bad boys were like that.

Then the sundae came, and she dug into the crushed fruit, ice cream, and sesame cookies. So Phil wanted to protect her. Didn’t they all.

Her watch read eleven o’clock straight up. She finished the sundae, listened to the Ink Spots sing “If I Didn’t Care” and Judy Garland warble “Over the Rainbow”—twice. The soda jerk had his elbows on the counter, frowning at the two girls, one white, one Chinese, making eyes at the Dead End Kids in the corner.

She drained a coffee cup, paid for the check, and bought a pack of cigarettes. Walked over to the jukebox, put in a nickel. The teenagers stared at her. Bold eyes, hunger of the young. The girls pouted and arched their backs, pushing their breasts out.

Mostly newer songs. She hit Miller’s “Moonlight Serenade.”

The leader of the pack crossed his arms and leaned on top of the Wurlitzer. Older than the other two, probably twenty-one or twenty-two. Wore a scar on his upper cheek like a medal, making sure his hair was combed back so it could be admired. Looked Filipino.

“Wanna dance?”

“No, thanks. I’m a little sad. That’s why I’m playing this song, for an old friend.”

He leaned in a little more, draping his long arms across the machine. “A tomato like you—sad—what a waste. Who is he? I’ll—” He made a gesture with his finger across his throat—“For you.”

“He’s dead.”

The kid lifted himself off the jukebox, pulled a long face. “Sorry, lady. But, you know, maybe it’s time to move on. Whadda they say at the movies? ‘Time—marches—on.’ ”

He delivered the line in an imitation baritone. The others laughed.

She shook her head. “I was reminded of it yesterday, when that boy got killed—what was his name?”

A small, skinny one piped up from her right. He looked about seventeen. “Eddie Takahashi. Nicky knew him, dincha, Nicky?”

The leader ran a finger along his thin mustache. Suddenly careful.

“Yeah, I knew him. A swell kid.” The girls’ eyes were as wide as the cuffs on Nicky’s trousers.

“It’s terrible. I hope they catch the killer. It’s so hard on the survivors—the family. He had family, didn’t he?”

The skinny one answered again, finding a niche of self-importance. “I seen him with his sister a lot. They used to come here, sometimes. Kinda stuck up about her, her bein’ pretty an’ all. Didn’t let no one get too close.”

Nicky snorted and took the bait. “I got plenty close. She ain’t that good-lookin’. But yeah, Eddie took real good care of his family. He was a good kid. We figure it was an accident, maybe.”

Miranda looked up, met his eyes. Shrewd and calculating.

“Such a tragedy. I expect it’s as you say, and a terrible accident. Thank you for telling me—it does make me feel a little less lonely.”

She walked away, his voice behind her soft. “You don’t ever need to be lonely, lady.”

She flinched, glad her back was to him. Benny Goodman and Martha Tilton followed her out the door.

We meet, and the angels sing …

Miranda pushed through the growing crowd already lining up for the Dragon Dance Parade, dodging strolling tourists gawking at pagoda architecture and wondering aloud how anybody ate anything with chopsticks. She reached the Far Eastern Bakery and swerved left, leaning against the Commercial Street side, pumps braced against the incline.

She took out the deck of Fatimas from Fong Fong and lit one, closing her eyes. She wasn’t sure what she was doing or why. It was Sunday, her day off, and she could be watching ships dock at the piers, or feeding sourdough to seagulls, or listening to the radio and taking bets on when England would be invaded. She had so many things to do.