City Of Fire Trilogy 1 - Dreamland (45 page)

They went on waiting. They went on rides to the moon, and down to hell, and up to Heaven, and the Matterhorn, and the top of the Steeplechase, and the Ziz. But sooner or later, he knew, Spanish Louie would go, as soon as he had talked up enough courage.

Kid convinced himself it was no less safe to let him go back. It was only a matter of time, anyway, before one of them spotted Louie strolling through the crowds in his Mex outfit, or wandered into the Elephant in search of some gooh. The dwarf was right: he would have to let him go, and take their chances.

“You know enough not to sell me out, don’cha, Louie?” he at least asked him before he left, seeing him off at the rail station.

“Sure, Kid.”

“No, I mean it,” he said, gripping Spanish Louie by both arms so hard the pigeons fluttered out of their roosts in the beams of the station house. Looking into his face, trying to get him to understand at least this much out of pure altruism.

“You know that Gyp’ll
say
you’re square with him, but he won’t mean it. All it means is he’ll have me an’ you, too. An’ he’ll do ya, Louie; he’ll do ya sure as a cop’ll pick up a stray finiff. You know that much, don’cha, Louie?”

“Sure, Kid. I know that,” Spanish Louie swore, as sincerely as he was capable of.

“You see what I’m talkin’ about, Louie?” he repeated, still holding his arms. And Louie repeated it dutifully—

“Sure, Kid, I see it; I see it same as you do”—though Kid knew, even as he said it, that he did not see it at all.

Only a
shlimazel
believes in
mazel—

He put him on the train to the City, with instructions to return no matter what within three days. Yet he was not terribly surprised when there was no sign or word from Spanish Louie after three days, or three weeks, or three weeks after that.

For a while Kid holed up in his room, with a pistol out on the bed and another on the dresser, waiting for them to come for him—though he knew that even these would not be enough. That there was nowhere in Dreamland or all of Coney or the whole City where he could hide for very long, if Gyp the Blood came after him.

He knew he should go, but he did not go. It wasn’t the sweaty little room holding him back, he knew, or the rides or the lights or even the ocean rolling outside his window every night. It wasn’t any of them, or even the opportunities that presented themselves, but the chance to see her again.

What a hell of a thing!—

—he muttered to himself in the morning, pocketing his change and his handkerchief, his chewing gum and his key, his guns and his blade and his dice. A hell of a thing all right, but it was undeniable: it was the girl.

He smiled to himself, a little embarrassed, just to think of it. To come all that way, from that
ongepotchket
little village—to go through everything and not get caught, avoiding all the snares—only to end up here, at the very edge of the sea. At last, here he was, tied down to something, but he felt curiously free and light, despite all the mess he knew he was now in.

First hitting Gyp with the shovel, and now this. Now the girl. He had looked down and seen her on the beach, and now he was caught.

After that he stopped worrying altogether about Spanish Louie not returning, or selling him out. He stopped worrying about one of the boys running into him, and walked out into the Sunday crowds again, in his best, cream-colored suit. Come what may, he would be ready for them—as ready as he ever could be.

Out in the surf, the bathers leaped and bobbed and squealed their way through the waves. They clutched onto the guidelines, squeezed into little wedges of beachfront partitioned off by hedges of barbed wire rolled right into the water. The happy clamor of the crowd subsumed in the roll of the breakers, the screams from the distant roller coasters. Men making human pyramids, and sticking out their chests. Women bending over and flipping up the skirts of their bathing costumes, grinning audaciously at the camera.

He looked out over the beach for a long time—then he sat down and began to take off his socks and shoes, rolling up his pants legs as quickly as a child. Until he could walk barefoot out on the warm sand, feeling it wriggle through his toes, holding his shoes in one hand, and keeping one eye out, as always, for whatever he might find.

He had the dream again.

He came out of the jungle, and was suffocated in the black, close space. The bodies of ten or twelve men curled up around him, head-to-knee, like cats. The air heavy with the smell of wet wool, and sweat, and perfumed smoke.

Li Yuen—Fountain of Beauty

It was always the same dream. He was in a jungle, the leaves green and ripe and luxuriant, air thick with decay. In the distance were the towers of a strange city, but all around him he could catch glimpses of beasts moving through the underbrush: the faces of leopards, and of apes, and the gray haunches of elephants. There was the sound of music coming from somewhere, and the sound of water, and he was looking for something.

He didn’t feel threatened by any of the animals—but beneath it all was a terrible feeling of dread, of low, lurking menace. He turned, expecting to see a pair of eyes staring at him—ape eyes, or human eyes, cold and bestial—but all he could see were more heads, the shifting, circling shapes and faces, receding slowly through the leaves—

He sat up coughing, reaching automatically for his guns—one in his vest, another one tucked beneath the hard little
chum tow
that cushioned his head.
Still there.
Next he checked for his wallet: everything in order, and he breathed deeply fromthe heavy, smoke-laden air, and wondered if he should have another bowl.

He picked up his
yen ngow,
and began to scrape the tiny, long-necked spoon through the little
dows
on the
yen gah
before him.

Three bowls—over how long? Was it still night? The same night?

All he remembered was padding down into the low basement room on a miserably hot, rainy afternoon. His anticipation building with each step he took—slipping through the unmarked door and holding up one finger to Mock Duck sitting like a stone ancestor in the vestibule.

One dow,
he had said firmly—

When had that been?

It wasn’t just the opium. He loved the whole ritual of the vice, so much more refined, so much
purer
than anything in the world above. The porcelain
dows
on their
yen gah
rack, waiting to be filled and screwed onto the pipe. The sponge to clean the pipe, and the thin
yen hock
needle to fill it. The little pair of scissors to trim the lamp wick—its yellow, tremulous flame the only light in the deep and weighty darkness.

Only then did the hop begin to do its work: the blissful, floating trinscendence. So clean, so immaculate—so far beyond anything to be had from needled beer, or good whiskey. The lush, brooding dreams—

Li Yuen—Fountain of Beauty. Fook Yuen—Fountain of Happiness.

He could easily go for another, but there wasn’t enough of the black, congealed grease left, and an aggregation was picking up around the door—a fiddle, and a singer, and some fool banging out one of the old hop house staples on its untuned piano, trying to get someone to buy them another
dow:

Gyp began to gather up his coat and hat, the hophead musicians annoying him too much to stay. Anyplace else, he would have simply told them to shut up and meant it, but he was leery about trying anything in Chinatown.

It went on and on, like all hop songs. Endless verses of doggerel, sung just so the yaps could think they were still alive. Gyp had no doubts on that score.

He signaled for Sam Kee, Mock Duck’s man, who picked his way swiftly through the hop sleepers laid out on their bamboo mats, his tight yellow silk robe swishing gently in the darkness. The Chinaman brought him a hot towel, and Gyp flipped him a coin and ran it roughly over his face while Sam Kee quickly set the
yen poon
tray to rights—rearranging all the delicate instruments in their sacred, eternal order.

He looked down at the little rack of
dows,
then glanced silently up at Gyp.

“Don’t worry,” Gyp grunted. “I’ll be back someday.”

The Chinaman shuffled obediently off with his tray. Gyp stood up and stared into the little mirror on the wall, examining the ragged, dirty patch of bandage along his scalp. At least his head had stopped hurting for a while—although he could already feel it beginning to throb again, even as he fingered it.

He straightened his bow tie, smoothed down his bright yellow suit as best he could. Even in the faint lamplight, he could see a matching yellowish tinge around his eyes, a twoday growth on his face. Things couldn’t go on like this, he thought—but then again, why couldn’t they?

He walked through the room, after Sam Kee, toward the door and the narrow, discreet flight of stairs that led back up to Mott Street.

Mock Duck sat by the door like a Buddha,an expressionless figure in a mandarin’s silken robe, a skullcap crowning his broad, flat face, a coat of chain mail protecting his potbelly. The chain mail was part of a reputation for craziness he cultivated as head of the Hip Sings, in the impenetrable gang wars of Chinatown. When the wars were on he was also known to simply walk out on the street with a pistol in each hand and begin firing, moving slowly around in a circle with his eyes shut.

Lately, though, Mock Duck had been much less gregarious. There had been a little girl who slept at his feet, Gyp knew, and brought him tea and almond cookies on a tray, but the child welfare agencies had made him give her up. It would have been all right if she had just been one more heathen Chinee, but some socially minded hophead had noticed she was a little white girl—brought from San Francisco, it was said, after her mother had abandoned her in a brothel there. Mock Duck had fattened her up, and doted on her, dressed her in silken Chinese dresses and put ribbons in her hair—until the child welfare people got wind of it, and packed her away to an orphanage where she got to sleep in a wool nightdress, and pray on her knees every night on the hard wood floor, and bathe in freezing cold water every morning.

Well, everybody had their troubles; that was why you went to a hop den. Mock Duck sat silent and unseeing by the door, apparently oblivious to the fools making such a racket.

That was the difference between himself and all the Willies, Gyp knew: he never expected to wind up in some sweet baby’s flat. He was satisfied if he could find his pistols and his money and stagger out into the heat.

Up on the street the muddled yellow-brown light was nearly unbearable. It was another steamer, the air like walls of heat he had to break through with every step.

He made his way to Canal, where they sold fish still twitching and flapping in their barrels, and live crabs, and fresh chickens and pickles along the sidewalk. The blue-bloused Chinamen eyed him warily before vanishing down into their basements like rabbits dropping down a hole.

They were a mysterious race, he assured himself. That was why he went down to Chinatown, when there were now hop shops in the Tenderloin, and on the Bowery. He preferred the anonymity, the feeling that he had walked into another world on Mott Street—the sudden openings into rooms where men sat eating with wooden sticks, the smiling, golden idols in their gold and scarlet temples—

Up along Grand Street, Gyp stopped and bought a piece of raw sugarcane from a Chinese boy for a penny, then ran his tongue pensively along the rough, bitter stick. The wound on his head had recommenced to ache, slowly infuriating him all over again.

He stalked blindly off to the east. Already, the bandage had made him a laughingstock with the mabs, and in the saloons. Somehow they would have to be found; it would have to be taken care of right away, before he could complete his father’s task, or even the little number Big Tim wanted him to handle—

He stopped in his tracks at the corner of Mulberry Street. There he was, right before him, sauntering through the crowds. At first he didn’t trust his own eyes; it seemed incredible that even
he
wouldn’t know enough to lay low, at least for a few weeks more.

Yet it was him, all right, big as life. The moustachios were gone, and the ridiculous Mexican get-up, but there was no mistaking him: It was Spanish Louie, all right, ambling along Grand Street as casually if he were out for his Sunday constitutional.