Black Dove (38 page)

He glared at me like I’d just stepped on his marbles.

“Sorry,” I said with a shrug. I looked over at his lackey. “Hey, Charlie. Miss me?”

“Not particularly.” Charlie’s gaze strayed to my left—to Gustav and Diana, who’d followed me out into the open. “You should’ve given up when you had the chance.”

Old Red threw Diana a rueful, sidelong glance.

“I tried,” he said.

That’s when Fat Choy started blathering in high-pitched Chinese. I turned to find the hoppie pointing at us with a long, skeletal finger—and Big Queue pointing at us with Chan’s gun.

“Fat Choy wants to know who you are,” Charlie said, translating for us out of force of habit, perhaps.

“I will tell him,” Madam Fong said, and she hocked out a wad of harsh, guttural sounds. Whatever she was calling us, I assumed it’d make “foreign devil” seem like a compliment.

Her words didn’t calm Fat Choy. If anything, his eyes went even wider with fear.

Behind him, though, Hok Gup seemed to take some strength from
what the madam said. She uncurled out of her cower, revealing herself to be taller than I’d first reckoned, and I saw what might have been a glimmer of hope upon her face—a hope that was directed at
us
. It brought out the beauty in her, and for the first time I noticed how her large eyes were both black and gleaming, dark yet flashing with life.

“What’d that pimp-mistress just say?” Old Red asked Charlie.

Charlie looked over at Scientific.

The highbinder answered the unasked question with an indifferent shrug. From the way he was holding Mahoney’s gun, it was hard to tell if it was pointed at us or at Big Queue beyond us.

“That you’re just a bunch of meddling fools,” Charlie said. “Friends of Gee Woo Chan who don’t know what they’re trifling with.”

“You put it too nice,” Madam Fong sniffed. “But it doesn’t matter. What matters is what we do with the
fan kwei
.”

“Which ‘we’ are you referring to, exactly?” Diana asked. “Because it seems to me that you and Mr. Scientific here aren’t necessarily a ‘we.’ ”

“We are until you are dealt with,” the madam replied.

Scientific said something to her in Chinese, and her cool went straight to a boil. She snapped something back fast, and within seconds they were yapping at each other at the same time, hands flapping at Hok Gup and Fat Choy and all us white folks.

“Care to translate?” I asked Charlie.

“Not this time.”

“It’s not hard to guess,” Diana said. “They’re debating. Haggling. Who gets who—”

“And who does what
to
who,” I finished for her. “Miss, I am truly sorry we got you into this mess.”

“Think back, Otto,” the lady said. “Who talked you and your brother into helping Dr. Chan?”

I rubbed my chin. “Oh, yeah. I reckon you owe
us
an apology.”

Then I had to back up and brace myself for more trouble—as if we could
be
in more trouble.

Mahoney was pushing himself to his feet.

“Just go ahead and shoot it out, why don’t you?” he shouted at
Scientific. He whipped around to jeer at Big Queue, too. “You! You’re no coward! Go on—drill the little bastard! You know he’ll plug you the first chance he gets!”

The highbinders ignored him. Charlie didn’t.

“That’s what you’d really love, isn’t it? If we’d all just kill each other.”

“Save decent people a lot of bother,” Mahoney sneered.

Gustav stepped past him, out toward the end of the pier. When he was between Scientific and Madam Fong, he stopped.

“Before you two come to some agreement or do each other in, either one, there’s something you oughta know,” he said to them. “It’s
you
who don’t know what you’re triflin’ with.”

The hatchet man and the madam just kept talking around him.

Big Queue grunted and waggled the derringer at the rest of us, his meaning plain.

Get back. Over there
.

My brother didn’t budge.

“We know everything,” he said. “What it’s all about.”

Big Queue took a step toward him.

“
Mah fung
,” Old Red said.

Madam Fong and Scientific finally shut up.

Big Queue froze.

Fat Choy frowned.

Hok Gup closed her eyes.

Mahoney blinked.

And me and Diana, we just gaped.

The only one who didn’t act like he’d just been hit upside the head was Chinatown Charlie.

“What’s syphilis got to do with anything?” he asked.

“Syphilis? Nothing,” Old Red said. “I’m talkin’ about
mah fung
.”

“But—,” Charlie began.

Gustav stopped him with a raised hand. “Please, Charlie. It was plain as day you were lyin’ about that medicine Fat Choy bought. I mean, Lee Kan doesn’t exactly cater to high society fat cats, does he? Highbinders, hopheads, and chippies—that’d be his clee-on-tell. Yet he ain’t gonna stock a remedy for Old Joe?”

My brother shook his head.

“Naw. We got the truth out of him after you cleared out. Then Miss Corvus here, she went straight to a telly-phone and rang up her friends at the
Examiner
. And whoo-eee, were they ever wound up. Front page stuff, they said. Am I right?”

Old Red looked back at Diana, one eyebrow arched.

How’s
that
for devious?
he was saying.

The lady nodded her approval. “The morning edition’s probably on the presses even as we speak.”

“Well, there you have it,” Mahoney said. He turned a gloating grin on Scientific. “Within a few hours, the whole town’s gonna know. The whole country. And if anything happens to us tonight, it’s gonna go all the worse for your kind all the quicker.”

Gustav spun around to face the copper. “Sounds like you know about the
mah fung
, too.”

“Well, I didn’t know the Chink word for it till just now . . . not that I care. But yeah. Sure.” Mahoney looked over Old Red’s shoulder, toward the end of the dock, his face contorting with disgust. “I know all about it.”

He was staring at Hok Gup.

As was Fat Choy now. And funny thing—he looked every bit as revolted as Mahoney.

“
M-m-mah fung
?” he said with a stammer that built up into a screech. “
Mah fung
!”

Hok Gup opened her eyes—and seemingly opened the flood gates, too. In an instant, her face was wet with tears.

“
Mah fung
?” Fat Choy screamed again. When he didn’t get an answer other than silent crying, he started to walk away, leaving the girl alone on the edge of the pier.

Hok Gup grabbed hold of his arm, babbling hysterically, her words quickly breaking down into wracking sobs. When he couldn’t tug himself free, Fat Choy lifted up a hand and slapped the girl hard across the face.

She crumpled to the planks in a wailing heap.

The highbinder stalked away from her.

Scientific, Big Queue, Madam Fong, Mahoney—they all stood there staring down at Hok Gup with cold contempt, like she was some mewling,
filthy animal that ought to be put out of its misery. Charlie at least had the decency to look more saddened than sickened. Yet, like the others, he made no move to help her. Which left it to us.

Old Red reached her first, squatting down and awkwardly patting her on the back. Diana came up next, whispering words of comfort Hok Gup probably couldn’t even understand. Together, we helped her to her feet.

It was like lifting an anvil, and a closer look at the creases and bumps in the girl’s bulky clothes told me why: Underneath the suit, I now saw, she was wearing Doc Chan’s bulletproof chain-mail vest.

“You lie,” Scientific said as we got Hok Gup upright. “You not know
mah fung
.”

“What makes you say that, Sci?” I asked.

“It’s obvious, you dumb son of a bitch.” Mahoney jutted his chin out at the weeping, wobbly-kneed girl we were still holding up. “Nobody wants to touch a
leper
.”

Or, the Last Pieces of the Puzzle Come Together, and It Isn’t a Pretty Picture

There are certain words
your body just reacts to, no brain work required. “Look out,” for instance. Someone shouts it, you up and
look
. Same with “Fire!” or, if you’re a drover, “Stampede!”

“Leper,” I learned, is one of those words, too. The moment Mahoney said it, I found myself flinching back from Hok Gup, shoving away the slender arm I’d been supporting with such chivalry just a second before, Gustav and Diana had the same reaction—letting go, jerking back. Even after the shock wore off, we didn’t stop moving away, shuffling back warily like Hok Gup was a puma crouched for a pounce instead of a sniveling girl alone and forlorn under the lantern at the end of the pier.

“I see it now,” my brother muttered. “I see it . . . .”

We stopped next to Mahoney and Fat Choy. It certainly wasn’t the most welcome company, but we couldn’t have sought out better had we tried. Not with Scientific and Big Queue—and their guns—blocking our way back to the Ferry House.

“Yee Lock must’ve found out first . . . or suspected it, anyhow,” Old Red said, his voice low and slow, like he was mumbling for his own ears only. “He’d have noticed the signs when he was inspectin’ the gals over to Madam Fong’s. But leprosy . . . that’d be a damn sight more serious than what the old man was used to. Crabs and the clap and what-have-you. So
he brought in another doctor, just to be sure. One of the most respected healers in Chinatown. Did it right in front of my eyes, too.”

“When he fetched Doc Chan yesterday,” I said.

Gustav nodded. “Chan, he would’ve seen the danger straight off. And not just sickness-wise. That’s why he went to Chun Ti Chu for money . . . and got it. Hok Gup”—he looked over at Mahoney—“she’s the bomb that could blow up all of Chinatown, ain’t she?”

The copper puffed out his chest and curled his lips into a haughty sneer. He may have been a prisoner, but he wasn’t about to admit he was powerless. Even a chained dog can still bite.

“Not just Chinatown, Tex. A Chink whore
leper
? Spreading her filthy disease to white men? When word gets out—and it will, mark my words—they’ll never let another slant eye into this country again.”

“And that’s so important to you?” Old Red asked, looking both perplexed and strangely saddened, as if what went on in Cathal Mahoney’s mind wasn’t just
a
mystery but
the
great mystery of mankind. “Worth killin’ for?”

“What the hell are you talking about?” Mahoney snarled.

Scientific jumped in with his own “What do you say?” While Madam Fong contributed a “What?” I, for once, was the soul of brevity: All I said was “Huh?”

“Yee Lock is dead,” Gustav said, turning first to the hatchet man, then the madam. “The sergeant here beat him to death.”

“Why, you crazy little hick . . . .”

Mahoney took a step toward my brother. I took a step toward
him
. We stopped with our chests a hair’s width apart.

“How’d you find out about the gal’s leprosy if not from thrashin’ the old man . . . huh, Sarge?” Old Red said. “I can’t imagine anyone in Chinatown racin’ to
you
with news like that. And don’t forget—I seen how you work when we was at Little Pete’s place. You’re a feller likes to kick a man when he’s down. Double him up holding his gut while you put your toe in—just like we found the old-timer. And his face?”

Gustav grimaced at the memory.

“Only thing could do that would be a brick or brass knuckles. I doubt
if you got a brick on you, but I
know
you carry knucks . . . cuz you waved ’em under my nose not two hours ago.”

Mahoney swung an arm out toward Scientific and Big Queue.

“Oh, like
they
don’t have brass knuckles? Like they don’t kick people? Open your eyes! Some Chinaman killed another Chinaman, that’s all. It happens all the time—and nobody gives a damn. The real issue here is that girl. She’s living, breathing poison! How many men are going to die because of
her?
”

For a moment, no one spoke, which spoke volumes in itself. Mahoney’s pathetic attempt to change the subject, his obvious desperation—that said it all. We didn’t have enough people out there to make a proper jury, but it was clear enough we’d reached a verdict: guilty.

Old Red broke the hush.

“I don’t know about any other men dyin’. I’ve just been tryin’ to work out what happened to
one
.” He turned toward Hok Gup. “Gee Woo Chan.”

The girl stared back at him, utterly still but for the wisps of dark hair that fluttered in the biting-cold breeze off the bay. She’d lost her bowler when Fat Choy hit her, letting the long, straight tresses pinned up inside cascade over her shoulders and down her back. Doc Chan’s spectacles she’d taken off so as to better wipe the tears from eyes.

She had nothing to hide behind anymore, and even knowing there was something unclean, diseased inside her, I saw her true beauty at last. I saw the Black Dove.

Then, for the first time, I heard her, too. She started haltingly, stammering, but she picked up speed as she went along. Her voice had a musical quality to it, rising and falling so that it almost sounded like a melancholy song.