City of Dragons (41 page)

She stared at the words until they swam around, Treasure Island lights on the Bay waters, kaleidoscope, finally wiping her eyes and reading them again.

Miranda—help me … Don’t trust no one no more.

Betty Chow had needed her, Betty Chow had been in trouble, deeper than Miranda could have guessed or known. Too late to help Betty now.

Flashbulb scene. Twisted body, dirt and dust and empty bottles. The voice on the phone, crying, trying to reach her, and then the slab, the morgue, dead now, all dead and gone, the bright-eyed girl who laughed shyly, sharing confidences at Dianne’s, who wanted to be in show business, because fuck … Didn’t they all?

Miranda closed her eyes for a moment. Fingernails dug into her palm, the pain an anchor against the wave, lashing her to the mast, Winken, Blinken, and Nod sailing off in a wooden casket.

The creature at the pit of her howled in anger, keeping her on her feet. Read it again, Miranda. Read it again.

Cool, analytical. Like scanning a meter of poetry. Look for the rhythm, look for the truth. This—
Wong working with Winters, get Sammy out
. Then a switch—
Wong and Charlie argue. Sammy runs Charlie now.

OK. So Filipino Charlie and Wong originally teamed up to smuggle drugs, probably with Winters, probably with outlets in Chinatown. Maybe through Dr. Mike, the Chinese Mr. Lonelyhearts.

Then Martini moved in. Probably part of a new expansion into San Francisco—with Joe Gillio and the International Settlement. Timing was right. But something happened to cool off Charlie and Wong, some part of what Martini did, enough for evidence to be peddled and money to be exchanged, and Wong—and Charlie, at least initially—to want the Italian out.

Papers and money, papers and money. A full suitcase, Winters’s dwindling bank account. The NYK man ready to pay for evidence to bring down Sammy Martini, and maybe save his daughter. Lester Winters, respectable Lester Winters of Alameda, giving ammunition to the DA in exchange for getting out and getting a deal. Guilty and not guilty.

Her open hand smacked the desk. Started to pace. Read right so far. Winters was the stoolie, the one who’d go to the cops, turn evidence against Martini, while Charlie and Wong disappeared with the cargo only to reemerge later, go back to small-time numbers and gambling rings.

Desperate trick to turn. They must have wanted Martini out enough to risk almost everything. So they pooled information, warmed up to Winters’s money, let him take the heat. What Winters himself had on Martini wasn’t enough. Or maybe Winters wasn’t guilty of anything except stupidity and bad taste in women. Maybe he didn’t know what was going on until his daughter was lost and he was drowning in it.

Wong was the key, the principal agent. Drafted Betty to deliver the evidence, and Eddie to deliver Winters’s money back to him and Charlie. Except:
Found Winters dead… . Frame for me I think.

Betty arrived, ready to do business with Winters on behalf of Wong and Charlie. But Needles had been there before her, and Coppa, or maybe Martini himself. He’d caught a change of wind, heard something, sensed Winters’s betrayal or desperation despite—or because of—Martini’s hold on his daughter. And nobody—not Needles, not Martini or Coppa, his surrogate—took the money in Winters’s suitcase. The bastard wanted to trace it, see which of his colleagues was less than collegial.

Fuck. Betty had been on a time clock since the eighth. They let her dangle, let her worry, for four days. Cat and mouse, cat and mouse. No wonder Wong was worried. And that motherfucker Charlie turned again, hedging the bets in his numbers game, making sure if anyone’s number came up it was Wong’s. Fuck, fuck, fuck …

She flung herself into the leather chair, frowning, staring at the letter.
Sammy likes her
. Motivation for Eddie to work with Wong and Charlie and Winters. Sammy “liked” Phyllis—if he liked you enough you’d be sold to a market with a longer life expectancy. Eddie took care of his sister. And Eddie had Winters’s money—money he was supposed to give to Wong, money, maybe, that could be used to show Sammy Martini who was with him and who wasn’t.

So Wong needed it. Charlie needed it. And Martini sat and waited, cat and mouse again, while they fought, and one of them had Eddie beaten up. And then somebody shot the kid, once they figured out who really had the cash.

Emily. Find Emily, find the money and prove your loyalty. A race to the dough, sugar for Sammy, ticket to survival for Wong or Charlie.

Fuck. No wonder they didn’t want her near Eddie Takahashi. The small-time numbers runner in the middle of a statewide gang war. His sister and an undisclosed amount of cash at stake, whatever Winters could dredge up, legally or not. Eddie passed the money to his sister for safekeeping, probably to get her out of town.

Miranda leaned back in the chair, her head throbbing. Fuck. Where the fuck was Emily Takahashi?

She banged open the desk drawer, looking for chewing gum. Found a stale stick of Choward’s Violet. Popped it into her mouth, ignoring the lack of elasticity.

There was something she was missing in the sparse, feverish lines, something important.
Going back to the house.
Could only mean Cordelia Street.

Her jaws froze. There it was. Betty’s key, the one that turned the lock.

The women cry all the time I can’t

Cut off, excised, the phrase isolated, unpunctuated. Coitus fucking inter-ruptus.

Sammy Martini was smuggling more than drugs. He was smuggling women. Not from Mexico, not in San Francisco.

From Japan. NYK Lines. Chinese women. “Comfort” women from the war, prisoners of it.

The fucking Rape of Nanking, over and over and over again.

The sigh spilled out of her, a kind of relief, a recognition of truth. Wong’s warnings, why he—and initially Charlie—wanted no part of Martini. Drugs were one thing, but women—women from a country at war, victims and loot, living examples of the superiority of Nippon and the Empire of Japan.

And a Japanese boy named Eddie Takahashi tried to stop it.

Fuck—it all made sense. Dianne’s talk about competition, the rumors about something big and dirty on the waterfront. Gillio’s complicity, the ex-bootlegger smuggling women into the shiny new Settlement for sin. Even Madame Pengo … that Bible quote. Something about a voyage with pain and danger, but not just to a ship—to lives.

Women’s lives. A piece of torn brocade by a shipping crate. A little girl, half Chinese, half white, crying in the street. Where’s Mommy now?

Miranda stared at the letter. Betty’s voice. Parade of people, the dragon dancing for China, fireworks, and the auction. And Sammy Martini with his own celebration, down at the International Settlement. Got a yen for yellow flesh, sir, step right up, they’re fresh from market, can’t beat the price, imported don’t you know. Fresh shipment tonight, fresh from the
Kamakura Maru
.

Welcome to the fucking rice bowl.

She dipped the fountain pen, wrote “Allen” on an envelope, and scratched a note. It read:

Martini, Charlie, and Gillio smuggling Chinese women for I. Settlement. House at 110 Cordelia Street. Saw Martini there earlier. Evidence in storage at Greyhound-Pickwick. Going to collect. Meet me back in office.

She signed it “M,” and pushed it to the corner of the desk. Looked at the phone. Debated for a few seconds, then reached for the receiver and dialed.

“Inspector Gonzales, please. No, Gonzales. G-o-n-z-a-l-e-s. He’s in homicide. Miranda Corbie.”

She waited impatiently, her fingertips drumming the wood, while the operator connected her, first to a bored cop, suffering from barnacles on his ass, and then to someone in robbery. Finally, an Irish voice answered.

“It’s over, Corbie. And your boyfriend isn’t here. Go back to chasing bigamists.”

Phil’s speech was slightly slurred. Must have had a long and liquid lunch. She held her temper.

“Nice to hear from you, Phil. I’ve found more evidence. Mann Act stuff, women smuggled in from occupied China via Japanese shipping. Even saw Martini in town, not too far from you boys. 110 Cordelia Street. You want to hear it, or do I wait for Gonzales?”

The growl on the other end wasn’t listening. “Is he who you’re waiting for, Corbie? You like ’em thick and dark, do you? You sure you don’t have him in your mouth alread—”

She slammed the receiver, breathing hard. Two fucking drunken bastards in one day was two too many. Oh yes, Mama, they hurt, they hurt, they cry, they feel bad. And only feel better when they hurt back.

Pain begetting pain. Cruelty fucks itself. Maybe that’s how the world was born.

It didn’t matter. Not now.

She stood up, stretched, her body anxious to move. Greyhound and Pickwick storage. Take the package, throw it in front of the new police chief, and the district attorney and the mayor. Three blind mice. See how the bastards run.

She reached for the Chief pad, leaned on the corner of the desk, and examined the storage ticket. D9830. Date was Thursday, February 8th. The fountain pen still had some ink on it, so she scratched the number on a sheet of paper, redipping it midway, and going over the letters again. Took the .22 out of her purse, picked up the pad and Betty’s dress, and opened the safe. The dress she neatly folded, and lay on the shelf inside. The notebook and gun she placed beside it.

Miranda reached to the back of the safe and pulled out what looked like a large cigarette case. Shut the safe door, walked back to the desk, sat down on the edge of the chair. Looked critically at the case, and opened up one side. Picked up the .25 Baby Browning.

She’d bought it in Belgium. Perfect concealed weapon, and one she didn’t have a license for. They didn’t sell them in America, the cops tended not to like guns they couldn’t find on a pat down. And the gangsters liked their substitute manhood big. Cops liked them that way, too.

Miranda didn’t take it out for every job. But for close work, for concealed work, it beat the .22 in accuracy and size. The Spanish pistol was just too damn much gun. And she couldn’t face the risk of losing it. The Baby Browning fit in her hand. The large Scotch-Irish hands she’d been so embarrassed over.

She checked the magazine, blew into it, and loaded it with the six bullets from the case. Weighed a little over ten ounces, loaded. Lethal as hell. And only four inches long.

The wardrobe smelled a little musty, but the coats were all right. Black one, narrow waist, overlarge pockets. The one on the right was a double pocket. The cigarette case fit snugly inside. Now she just needed cigarettes for the other dummy side, the one she’d open if she needed to.

Next was the storage receipt. Just in case.

She slipped off her left pump, and picked it up. Reached into a desk drawer, pulled out some masking tape. Set the shoe down, tore off a couple of small pieces of tape, and carefully secured the storage ticket to the top of her shoe pump. If they were smart, they searched under the foot pads. But nobody ever thought to search the uppers—at least so far. And she didn’t really give a damn what the locker attendant at Greyhound thought of her for taking off a shoe and prying out a receipt.

She slid the shoe back on, put on the coat, buttoned it, and adjusted her hat. Wristwatch said 5:15. Valentine’s dinners, the aroma of love drifting through the city like the fog. Gonzales was probably out nursing his nose and extorting sympathy from some simpering fool who didn’t know better.

And Rick … Rick was working, like he always did, drowned in a pool of ink, buried under a pile of type. Maybe Allen’s wife called, and he forgot about Gillio and Martini.

Miranda looked at herself in the mirror, straightening the coat. Cheek was looking almost human again, at least in terms of size.

She stared at herself. She was alone, and that’s the way she liked it.

She grabbed her purse and the letter to Allen, shut and locked the office door behind her.

Allen’s door was closed, and so was the front office. She knocked on the door, and waited a few moments. Knocked more urgently when no one answered. The third series brought a head of red hair out from a door on the hallway. The office next to Allen’s.

“We’re closed, lady—oh, Miranda. You want somebody in particular, or just feel like knockin’ the door down?”

“I’m looking for Allen. You see him?”

He shook his head, blowing a cloud of blue cigar smoke toward a rumpled matron and bespectacled husband looking for Union Pacific. “Not since lunch. You want me to give him a message?”

His pudgy pink fingers took the letter she extended, and he looked at it curiously. “He doing things he shouldn’t be?”

“How the hell should I know? Are you?”

He laughed. “I’ll prop it on his desk. See you around, Miranda.”

“See you, Bert.”

He disappeared and shut the door. Only a few footsteps echoed through the fourth floor, and Miranda rode down in the elevator alone.

The lobby was as crowded as the fourth had been sparse. Men in sweaty-brimmed derbys were buying candy from the lobby girls, the last-ditch panic of Valentine’s Day after work, the sun never showing itself, the fog settling into a study in grayish black.

Gladys was busy relieving two business men of guilt and cash, while another woman waited and found nothing to amuse herself. Miranda needed a cigarette, and she lingered between the lobby shop and the doors, trying to catch Gladys’s eye.

5:25 already. Traffic would be tough, and so would taxis. Goddamn it, but she needed a Chesterfield.

One of the men wasn’t quite done choosing thoughtful gifts for his wife, and an old lady joined the impatient woman. She thought Gladys saw her, but figured she’d survey the traffic scene out on Market for a few minutes, give the girl time to find the promised cigarettes. “They satisfy,” all right. Tremors were still coursing through her fingers.

Miranda pushed open the heavy lobby door, and Market Street hit her in the face. Neon was starting to glow in the gray dusk, a sunlight San Francisco could depend upon.

Honks and shrieks from screaming rail tracks, sidewalks packed, people in a hurry. Taxis rode bumpers, weaving in and out with the nerve that only cab drivers possessed. White Fronts and municipals chugged sluggishly, bursting with passengers and no standing room. A man was waiting across the street at Lotta’s Fountain with a rose and a smirk on his face, expecting the girl and the Valentine’s Day Special.