Crooked Hearts (27 page)

Mornings after were always difficult, he reminded himself. This one went beyond difficult; but then, last night hadn’t exactly been routine as far as first-time lovemaking experiences went. What had it meant to Grace? What did she think of him now? Was she ever going to let him touch her again? Was she ever going to stop washing?

They weren’t the kind of people who talked much about their feelings, he supposed. Usually that was fine with him; women were much too keen, in Reuben’s experience, on mulling and classifying and categorizing every little speck of information once a relationship got interesting, interesting meaning physical. Right now, though, just this once, he wouldn’t have minded a quick, candid conversation in which everything got said and settled, so they could get on with being … whatever it was they were going to be to each other.

“Would you mind going out of the room while I dress?”

He stared at her. “Say that again?” He cupped his ear humorously.

Not a trace of a smile crossed her face. She put her hands on her hips, belligerent. “I’d like some privacy. Is that too much to ask?”

She was trying to pick a fight! Well, she wouldn’t get one out of him. “Of course not,” he said solicitously, walking to the window. “I’ll stand here with my back to the room—how’s that? I’m afraid it might not be safe out in the hall, Grace. Is this all right?” She made a hostile, frustrated sound, presumably of assent. While he waited, idly scanning the street below, a fantasy came into his head. In it, he spun around and grabbed her, lifted her up in the air by her narrow waist, and gave her a big, joyful, smacking kiss between her breasts. She shrieked at first, then started to laugh. He held her tight and said, something perfect—affectionate but not binding—and she agreed with him. They fell on the bed in a heap and made noisy, athletic love.

That’s the way it was supposed to be. So why wouldn’t she talk to him? What the hell was going on in that complicated female head?

Many things. Not the least of them was the realization that her body felt as if a train had run over and pulverized it. Everything ached, including her hair. She imagined this must be how circus acrobats felt after the last show. Bad acrobats, the ones who’d let themselves go. Looking at herself in the mirror over the washstand had taken an act of personal courage, and she still cringed at the memory of barbaric hair, bloodshot eyes, pasty skin where it wasn’t chapped and livid from Reuben’s beard stubble, funny little bruises on her neck whose origins she remembered perfectly. The fact that he looked disgustingly fit and well-rested only darkened her mood.

Taking him at his word, she threw off the hated yellow dressing gown and began to struggle into her clothes, keeping a wary eye on his back. He hadn’t forgotten anything in the unmentionables department, she noticed sourly as she pulled her white lawn chemise over her head. Which just went to show. His nonchalant posture annoyed her, she wasn’t sure why. She’d been hoping he would come back and act as if nothing much had happened, and that’s exactly what he was doing. Now that annoyed her, too. Did he think last night’s goings-on were an ordinary occurrence for her? A bit more intense than usual, maybe, because of the circumstances, but still, the sort of thing she was pretty much used to? Well, damn him for a horse’s behind if he did!

She yanked a silk stocking over her knee and anchored it with a garter. She already knew what he thought of her morals; he’d made it plain that night he’d kissed her outside in his backyard and then wondered what “game” she was playing when she wouldn’t jump into bed with him. Last night’s bizarre chain of events could only have reinforced his opinion.

Well, so what? What did she care? She hadn’t done anything wrong, it was all because of the drug. Everything was the drug’s fault. She only had one regret, really, when all was said and done, only one thing she wished that she, on her end, could take back. She wished she hadn’t said, “Let’s make love in bed,” last night in the heat of the moment. And later, “Love me, Reuben, make love to me.”
Love,
it went without saying, had nothing to do with it, not for her and certainly not for him. She just wished she’d been more precise in her choice of words. She just wished …

Oh, who was she kidding? The truth was, she was scared to death. Last night—God, just thinking about it had her face hot and her hands trembling. All that wantonness, all that need, and the worst was knowing, deep down, that Wing’s drug wasn’t even responsible for it. Not all of it, anyway. Her passion for Reuben had come burning up from a much stronger,
natural
fire inside herself. She hadn’t needed the Godfather’s aphrodisiac except for an excuse. A scapegoat.

Even so, she wasn’t ashamed of herself for wanting Reuben. By some miracle, in spite of everything her stepparents had done to teach her that sex was dirty and disgusting, the lesson had never quite sunk in. So she could admit without shame that she’d been attracted to Reuben from the moment they’d met. Sex wasn’t complicated, it wasn’t a sin, and it wasn’t what scared her.

What scared her was the possibility that she was falling in love. Horrible, awful, perverted curse, absolutely out of the question! Hadn’t she had enough of abandonment and loss and disillusionment to last a lifetime?
By God,
she wouldn’t put herself on the line again, ever, for anyone, especially not for a man like Reuben Jones. Reuben Jones! Out of all the men in the whole world, why did she have to fall for one who was even crookeder than she was? Was it a joke? God’s idea of a good time, something to chuckle over when things got dull up in—

“Holy shit.”

She jerked her head up, fingers freezing on a jet button at the back of the rose tulle shirtwaist he’d brought, to go with her black taffeta skirt. How had he known they went together? What kind of man knew such things? “What—?” she began, when he whirled, and the look on his face stopped her heart. He lunged for her and started to pull her toward the door. “Reuben, wait, my—”

“Tom Fun’s down there with another guy, pointing at the building. Come on, Gus, they’ve found us!” She jerked out of his grasp and ran back for her shoes—she wasn’t going to run around Chinatown barefooted a second time. “Come
on.”
He grabbed her again and yanked her out the door. She let him pull her along the hall, hopping on one foot, holding her second shoe in her hand. “Not that way,” he muttered when she started toward the front stairs. “Back way—this way. Hurry!”

A set of servants’ stairs from the Bunyon Arms’ long-dead past led down to the first floor and, more important, the door to the alley behind the building. Grace got her second shoe on and finished buttoning her blouse while Reuben scouted the alley. From the intersection with the street to the left, he motioned to her that the coast was clear; she darted out of the building and ran toward him.

“Where are we going?” she asked as they went along, walking fast, craning their necks to look behind them every few feet. The narrow street was quiet and almost empty, except for one drunken sailor winding his way toward them.

“North, I hope. Away from Chinatown.”

They reached the corner. “Then we’re going the wrong way.” She skidded to a halt, pointing to the street sign on the side of the building they’d just passed. It was in Chinese.

Before they could turn, a man trotted around the corner from the right, silent in cork-soled sandals. When he saw them, he stopped in his tracks, looking as startled as they did. He grinned nervously and shuffled closer. When Reuben tensed and tried to pull Grace behind him, the man threw up his hands, palms out. “Mean no harm!” he assured them, and stayed where he was. He was an unlikely-looking hatchet man, chubby and jolly-looking, bald except for a black fringe in back from ear to ear. Grace thought he looked like an Oriental Friar Tuck, only smaller.

“Anything we can do for you?” Reuben asked him, holding her hand.

He bowed without taking his eyes off them. “Have message. Mean no harm,” he repeated, smiling.

“What’s the message?”

“Message is, Kai Yee not want anyone to die,” he said carefully, as if reciting a poem he’d memorized. “Kai Yee only want lady. Say come, treat good, nobody hurt.” He grinned and bowed some more, waiting for applause.

“Well, there you have it,” said Reuben. “A gracious invitation if I ever heard one. What do you say, Gus?”

“I don’t think so.”

He shrugged apologetically. “The lady doesn’t think so. Would you excuse us now? We’re in just a bit of a—ahhha.”

The hatchet man had pulled a meat cleaver out of his blue pajamas. He held it up, blade out, next to his round, grinning face.

Grace felt Reuben’s suddenly sweaty grip on her hand slacken, saw all the blood drain from his face. “Ahhha,” he said again, smiling sickly. “Why didn’t you say so? Here—if you want her that bad, take her.” She gasped, and he gave her a little push in Mean No Harm’s direction.

The surprised Chinaman grabbed her wrist with the hand that wasn’t holding the meat cleaver and started backing up. “Get your paw off me, you—” She jerked back, trying to fling away from him, but he held on tight while keeping an eye on Reuben—an unnecessary eye, since he was still standing in the same spot, baffled-looking, arms at his sides. “Reuben!” she shrieked at him. She couldn’t believe he was going to let the jolly hatchet man kidnap her. “Reuben!”

He waved, sadly, and put his hands in his pockets.

Mean No Harm’s chubby little hand was breaking her wrist. She tried a kick to his groin, but he dodged nimbly and gave her arm a painful, punishing yank. “Son of a bitch!” she called him, and clamped her teeth over his knuckles.

“Aya! Aya!” He hit her on the shoulder—with the heel of his hand, not the cleaver—but she only shut her eyes and bit down harder. She heard a scuffling sound behind him. He heard it too, but not in time.

Crash!
Glass everywhere, and bubbles, and dripping water. No, not water—wine. Reuben had the broken green neck of a wine bottle in his hand, his mouth open in an expression of excited anguish, watching the hatchet man drop to his knees and fall over on his back like a sack of rice.

“Gone,” Reuben whispered, heartsick, disbelieving. “Gone.”

“No, he’s just unconscious,” she said gently. “You didn’t kill him.”

He turned his tragic eyes on her. “Not him, you numbskull, the Dom Perignon. The Premiere Cuvee—a masterpiece—irreplaceable—” He choked up and couldn’t go on.

The silver handle of a pistol was sticking out of the waist of Mean No Harm’s baggy trousers. Grace bent and snatched it out. A cheap .38; if he’d used it instead of the meat cleaver, he wouldn’t be lying on his back in the gutter. “Thank God for the hatchet tradition,” she muttered, sticking the pistol in her skirt pocket. “You weren’t really going to let him take me, were you?” she thought to ask. “You were just waiting for him to let down his guard, right?”

“Right,” he said reflexively.

She wasn’t sure he’d heard the question. He looked grief-stricken, as if his best friend had died. She had to drag him away, still mumbling disconsolately. “Come on, come on.
Hurry,
Reuben, we’ve got to get out of here, get home and out of sight. This street? Where is everybody? Is this north?” It was too cloudy to see the sun. She looked uncertainly down a lane that wound out of sight before the first block. She didn’t like the look of it, but if that was north—

“We can’t go home.”

“Yes, we can. If this is north and we just keep—”

“We can’t go home because the Croakers trashed it.”

“Oh, no!”

“Everything’s gone, there’s nothing left. Except a note that says they’ll kill me if they find me.”

“My God.” They stared at each other. “Reuben, what are we going to do?” Over his shoulder, she saw a man rounding the corner. It was Tom Fun.

He saw them and started to run. Reuben grabbed her and they fled, back the way they’d come.

At the first cross street, they careened to the left. For precious seconds their pursuer couldn’t see them. “Look,” Grace panted, hauling on Reuben’s hand to slow him down, pointing into the mouth of a damp, dark alley. “We could hide, get out of sight—” He grunted, and they ducked into the alley.

Bad idea. The alley was blind, although they didn’t know it until they’d gone twenty yards and tried to follow what had looked from the street like a dogleg to the right. It was a dogleg into a brick wall, with no door, no crevice, not even a trash can to hide behind. Running footsteps made them spin around and freeze. Tom Fun, gaunt and scar-faced, appeared in the alley’s stinking angle, holding a big, ugly ax.

Reuben groaned piteously and went white again. “Shoot him. Oh, please shoot him.”

She’d forgotten she had the gun. She fumbled it out of her pocket and took aim.

Tom Fun didn’t even break stride. “Shoot him,” Reuben begged.

She couldn’t pull the trigger. Tom Fun raised the ax and kept coming.

“Shoot him!”

“I can’t!”

The hatchet man lunged and swung, missing Reuben’s head by a hair. Stumbling into him, Reuben grabbed him around the waist. Now she could shoot— she knew she could—but they kept turning and grappling, she was afraid she’d hit Reuben by mistake. She circled them, gun pointed, barely aware that she was shrieking, “Reuben, get out—no, the other—no—move!”

Tom Fun jerked his elbow up into Reuben’s throat, and he had to let go, choking. The hatchet man hauled back with his ax. Reuben pivoted toward Grace while she skipped sideways, looking for a shot. The ax caught him on the hip with a sickening thud, and he fell. “Reuben!” she screamed. Tom Fun’s body blocked her view; like a lumberjack about to split a log, he reared up again with the ax. At the height of his swing, she pulled the trigger and shot him in the buttocks.

He fell on top of Reuben, squealing like a wounded pig, while the ax skidded sideways. Reuben squirmed out from under him, cursing, bleeding. Grace let the gun slip from her fingers and clatter to the ground as she dropped to her knees beside him. With his eyes closed, there was absolutely no color in his face except for the ash-gray of his lips. “Please don’t faint, Reuben. How bad is it? Can you walk?”