Fortune is a Woman (23 page)

Lai Tsin came back to her a few days later and told her that the word was there was a nice piece of land near Union Square with the remains of a building still on it. The foundations were good and he could organize credit and also the necessary labor and supplies.

Francie watched their busy lives listlessly. It seemed good fortune was smiling on everyone but her, and her awful secret.

CHAPTER 18

Josh.
The name sent vibrations through her entire body and she pressed her hands against her growing belly. She went to look in the long mirror Annie had installed in their shared bedroom, turning anxiously from side to side. There was no doubt her waist was thickening, but the bulge was still small enough to hide under her long Chinese smock. Her secret was safe.

She looked dispiritedly at her reflection. Her blond hair was dragged back into a knot, her small heart-shaped face looked gray and pinched, and there were lines of tension around her mouth and eyes. She thought of the girl of a few months ago in her white lace ball dress and sparkling tiara, and she looked again at the same eighteen-year-old girl, who was now a gray waif in her high-necked Chinese smock and black trousers. She belonged to a different world.

She walked tiredly back to the window, gazing out on the endless activity. The old Chinatown had been a dark, secretive ghetto, a hellhole of rat-infested tenements filled with crime of every sort: singsong girls, slave-girls, gambling halls and sweatshops, opium dens and the bloody violence of the rival tongs who ran it all. The city fathers wanted to build a new Chinatown out at Hunters Point, but the Chinese ignored them and were busily rebuilding it exactly where it had always stood. Only this time the new buildings were in the old Chinese style with carved rafters and pierced screens at the windows, painted scarlet, green, and gold. They had green-tiled roofs with curved eaves and guardian lions at the red-lacquered doors. The streets smelled of incense and spices and rang with the sound of sawing and hammering. New buildings were rising up almost overnight as men worked round-the-clock shifts to restore their shattered homes and businesses.

Francie thought of Annie over at Union Square, supervising the rebuilding of her new boardinghouse and, no doubt, driving the workmen crazy. Annie had lived with the family building trade all her life, she knew what was what and she let the builders know it. Francie had been with her once when she had found the men shirking, drinking beer and standing around smoking. They stared sheepishly at the little battle-ax of a woman giving them a piece of her mind, reminding them it was her money and her time they were wasting, telling them they had better get on with it or they'd know about it. There had been black looks and grumbles as they'd straggled slowly back to work, but they knew Annie was fair as well as feisty, and that a hard worker always found a good bonus in his wage packet at the end of the week.

Just the other day, when the roof was finished, Annie had declared a party. Long trestle tables had been set up and covered with starched white cloths, because even amongst the dust and cement, Annie liked everything nice. She invited their families and there was as much beer and food as anyone wanted and they raised their glasses in a toast to her, laughing as they admitted she was a good employer even if she was a woman.

And Lai Tsin worked at his business more hours than Francie thought existed, yet he still found time to do the lessons she set him to. He pored avidly over the simple children's storybooks, reading each new word out loud, running his finger carefully along the letters. And he copied his lessons neatly into the exercise book he took with him everywhere. He absorbed her teaching like a sponge and he was so eager to learn that she almost had trouble keeping up with him.

Lai Tsin had decided it was proper for Little Son Philip Chen to be brought up with a Chinese family. "He must be like the other Chinese boys and learn their ways," he said. "When he is older and wiser he will learn Western ways, too, but now he must understand his heritage."

And that left only Francie with nothing except her bad memories of the past and her fear of the future. And she dare not even tell Lai Tsin or Annie about the baby, she was so ashamed.

There was a sudden tap at the door and she ran to open it. A small boy looked quickly up at her, pushed a piece of paper into her hand and darted back down the stairs.

She stared after him, puzzled, and then she closed the door and looked at the crumpled piece of paper. On it was written,
"If you still love me, come to Gai Pao's alley at nine o'clock tonight."
And it was signed,
"Josh."

The blood rushed from Francie's face and her heart thudded in her chest. She told herself it couldn't be true, it must be some kind of cruel joke. But no one knew about Josh—only Lai Tsin and Annie, and they would never play tricks on her. There was a sudden flutter in her belly and she put her hand there, feeling her child for the first time. Maybe it was an omen and meant Josh was still alive after all.
If you still love me,
the note had said.

Panicked, she stared at it, wishing the others were there, but Lai Tsin would be working and Annie was at a meeting with the architect and wouldn't be back till late.

She paced to and fro, telling herself she wouldn't go, and then she thought of Josh lying in the ruins and thought maybe he really wasn't dead after all. And she knew she must.

She left a note telling Annie where she had gone and then she made her way through mean back streets, searching for Gai Pao's alley, and when she found it, it was just a dark deserted little dead-end. It was pitch-black with just a faint glimmer of light at the very end and she hesitated, frightened. She wanted to turn and run but the note was like bait, luring her on. She stepped nervously down the alley, hugging the broken walls and peering over her shoulder. A dim light burned over a curtained doorway and she hesitated again. She knew she should just turn around and run, but she couldn't.
If you love me,
the note had said, and it was love that made her pull back the curtain and step inside.

The cramped room was lit by a flickering kerosene lamp. It was noisy with the clatter of mah-jongg tiles and the shouts of the gamblers and it reeked of tobacco, paraffin, opium fumes, and sweat. The Chinese at the gambling tables turned to stare at her, muttering angrily, and she shrank timidly against the wall. At a counter on the left a man was serving rice wine in gourd-shaped pots. He beckoned to her and said quickly, "Come with me, missee. Hurry. This way."

She followed him through another curtained doorway, stumbling after him down an endless labyrinth of ruined passageways until they came to a small square room. Only half the walls remained standing, there was no roof and the moon glimmered from behind the clouds, silhouetting the empty doorway and blank windows. Francie suddenly realized that her guide had gone and she was alone. A thrill of fear shot up her spine as she stared around her. She could just make out a shape in the middle of the floor —it was a chair. And there was someone sitting on it. The blood sang in her ears and her heart was thudding so hard against her ribs, she thought it would burst.

"Josh?" she whispered.

"I thought you wouldn't be able to stay away from him," a familiar voice said. A lamp shone in her eyes, dazzling her, and she froze. It wasn't Josh's voice she was hearing, it was Sammy Morris's.

"Aye, it's me," Sammy said, holding the lantern higher so she could see his face. Terrified, Francie stared at him. She had walked right into his trap. "Then it was you who wrote that note," she whispered.

"Aye, of course it was me. Josh here can't write anymore, y'see. So I thought I'd just tell you he still loves you." His dark eyes glowered at her the way they always had and he smiled a small, triumphant smile. He lifted the lamp so it shone on the chair. A blond-haired man was sitting on it. Francie felt faint, she knew it couldn't be true. She had heard Josh die. She had watched him die. Had he come back from the grave to find her?

Sammy grabbed her arms. He twisted them behind her back and dragged her across to the chair. "Take a look at him, Francie," he said savagely. "Just look at your lover. See how handsome he is now?" And then he lifted the lantern high so the light fell on the man's face. Only it wasn't a face anymore, it was just a lump of puckered blueish-red flesh. Supperating sores marked the wounds, the mouth was a grotesque grimace, and the blank eyes stared sightlessly upward.

Francie screamed with horror and Sammy twisted her arm even tighter. He pressed her closer to the monster on the chair. "Go on, kiss him, Francie, why don't you? After all,
you
did this to him." She screamed again, a high, thin, keening sound. Terror gave her strength and she twisted from Sammy's grasp. With an oath he dropped the lantern and the light flickered and went out, leaving them in darkness.

He cursed again as Francie ran for the patch of lighter gray where the door had once been. Then she was out in the alley, running and running. She heard him pounding behind her, he was gaining on her, getting closer and closer. She could see a light where the alley joined the street and she ran even quicker. Then suddenly she tripped. He grabbed her. She smelled his sweat and heard his rasping breath and felt his hands on her throat. As though from a great distance she heard footsteps and someone shouting and then she remembered no more.

***

Lai Tsin felt for Francie's pulse; he chafed her icy hands, stroking back her hair, willing her to open her eyes. And he called silently to all the gods to help her; she was his friend, his helpmate, his child, his daughter, his love, and all his good fortune meant nothing without her. And when at last she opened her eyes again he carried her into a cab and brought her home.

Annie almost fainted herself when she saw them. She thanked God that at least Francie had had the sense to leave her the note and Lai Tsin had known where to find her. And when she looked at her, ashen-faced and trembling and barely able to speak with shock, she knew something terrible had happened.

"They're not dead," Francie whispered. "I saw both of them, Sammy and Josh. Oh, Annie, it's too terrible even to think about, his face was so hideous, all his sweetness and beauty gone. Sammy forced me to look... he had a knife—"

Annie clutched a hand to her heart as fear gave way to hope. "You can't mean Josh is alive!"

"Where did you see them?" Lai Tsin asked quietly.

"In the opium den on Gai Pao alley. The note said to meet him there... if I still loved him, it said." She uncurled her hand, and Annie took the crumpled note from her, and read out the message.

"That's not Josh's writing," Annie said. "I'll swear to that. It'll be Sammy Morris, just like she said."

Lai Tsin thought about the note and the message that had seemed to come from beyond the grave and knew that Francie was still in danger.

The half-ruined streets of Chinatown were quiet as Lai Tsin returned to the alley later. He knew the place, it was a notorious haunt of the tongs, the old Chinese secret societies that ruled the worlds of prostitution, gambling, opium, and violence. They had divided the town into territories and their wars were bloody, hachet-wielding affairs that left many dead.

He stole silently toward the glimmer of light at the end of the alley, pulled aside the heavy curtain and slid inside. No one noticed him in the noise and the gloom. Through a layer of smoke and opium fumes the flickering kerosene lamp shone on the Mah-Jongg tiles and the flasks of rice wine and the opium pipes piled in a heap. The man behind the bar was young and hard-faced, his flat eyes flickered from side to side as Lai Tsin asked him about the
gwailos,
the Westerners who had been there earlier.

"I don't know what you are talking about." He shrugged, but Lai Tsin could tell by his shifty demeanor that he knew all right.

"How much did they give you?" he asked, taking some dollars from his pocket and displaying them carelessly.

The man hesitated and Lai Tsin slid a ten-dollar bill across the splintered wooden counter. "They paid me twenty," the man said, reaching greedily for the money. Lai Tsin held another ten temptingly in front of him and said, "When you tell me all you know."

He shrugged. "One man came in. He was young, black hair and eyes, small and wide like this." He held his arms out from his shoulders like a gorilla and laughed. "He said he wanted a secret place to meet a
gwailo
woman, someone else's wife." He grinned, showing a row of brown-stained teeth. Lifting his shirt, he showed Lai Tsin the small hatchet strapped to his waist. "If she were a Chinese wife you know what would have happened to him," he boasted, patting the gleaming blade.

"So?" Lai Tsin prompted.

"So I showed him a place in the ruins and he told me she would come at nine o'clock and I should bring her there and leave her. And that is exactly what I did. No more, no less."

He held out his hand for the other ten dollars but Lai Tsin said, "First you show me the place." The man's eyes flickered dangerously, but he turned and picked up the lantern, and, grumbling, led the way out the back door and down the winding half-ruined passageways to the place. There was no need of a lantern now, the full moon was riding high in the night sky and in its light Lai Tsin could see it was empty. The man silently pocketed his extra ten dollars and disappeared the way he had come.

A broken chair lay overturned in the center of the room and Lai Tsin walked toward it and righted it. Something lay underneath and he picked it up. It was a blond wig and next to it was a Chinese "devil mask," the kind used in processions and festivals, only this had been altered to make it even more hideous. The moonlight showed the puckered red scars, the twisted mouth, and the hollow eyes, which were mere paint, but he could easily see how in the semidarkness and with fear they would have looked real and terrifying.

He thought hard as he walked back down the alley. A man like Sammy, intent on stalking his prey, would not be too far away. He would stay close to her, where he could watch, waiting for his chance. And a
gwailo
in Chinatown should not be hard to locate. Threading his way through the labyrinth of alleys he emerged into a bigger street at the house of the Honorable Elder. He knocked on the door and waited. There was no reply, and picking up a handful of small stones he tossed them at the upstairs window. Immediately it was flung open and an irate voice exclaimed, "Who is that disturbing the sleep of the blessed?"