Crooked Hearts (16 page)

He stooped to open the bottom drawer of his desk, bringing out the pillowcase-wrapped statue of the tiger. “That’s one odd aspect of the Wells Fargo robbery. Another is that the thieves made off with only a small part of the booty on board the stagecoach, and they seemed to know exactly what they were looking for. They stole exclusively funerary sculpture, even though there were older and more valuable pieces there for the taking.”

“We noticed that ourselves.”

“According to the newspapers, the police are baffled. But I have a theory.” He shot them a shrewd glance from beneath his heavy eyelids.

“What?” Grace asked obligingly.

“That if the authorities could make your friend Fireplug reveal his connection with the Bo Kong tong, they wouldn’t be baffled anymore.”

“Why not?”

“Because the leader of the Bo Kong is a very unusual man. A cultured eccentric in some ways—a scholar, a poet, a calligrapher—and an old-fashioned thug in others. His name is Mark Wing. He was implicated in the seventies in a plot to murder the regent to the Chinese throne, and fled to this country about twelve years ago. Now he’s an exile. Here he’s known as Kai Yee, or Godfather.”

“Mark Wing,” Reuben repeated thoughtfully. “I’ve never heard of him.”

“That’s not surprising. Secrecy surrounds him, as it does all the tongs. Outside Chinatown, very little is known of these people, and inside, fear keeps most of my informants’ mouths closed. But not all.”

He pulled a cigarette from the pocket of his jumper and lit it with long, bony fingers, stained yellow from nicotine. “The Bo Kong began in China as a secret anti-Manchu movement. In this country, it’s become corrupt, like so many of the tongs. Here it’s a gang of hoodlums with no principles except devotion to vice and violence. Because of the secrecy and the fear, it’s often hard to separate fact from fiction, but it’s well known that Mark Wing is involved in the gambling and opium trades, as well as the importation of slave girls from China for prostitution.”

Grace made a disgusted sound.

“A few years ago, he tried to enter wealthy white society by frequenting places like the Palace Hotel and the opera house, escorting beautiful Caucasian women. He cut a strange figure, dressed in Western clothes but always surrounded by his sword-wielding bodyguards. He’s very rich, and outwardly quite smooth and cultured, so he was never denied admittance or thrown out of any of the fancy establishments he tried. But he never got anywhere in white high society—an experience he must have found humiliating, because after a short time he retreated back into the bowels of Chinatown, and now he never leaves his residence on Jackson Street.”

“Never?” marveled Grace.

“I exaggerate. The exception is on Friday nights, when he invariably dines at the Placid Sea restaurant, buys a lottery ticket from a street vendor, and then goes to the Chinese theater, always surrounded by his cadre of
boo how doy
—hatchet sons—for protection. On the way home, he checks on his gambling dens in Waverly Place, of which he’s reputed to own at least half a dozen, and most of the opium parlors on Dupont Street as well. He owns the brothel next door to his own house, which must be very convenient. It’s called the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment.”

Grace was wide-eyed with fascination. “Is he married?”

“Not currently. He’s had innumerable concubines and at least two wives, whom he divorced when they failed to bear him children.” Doc dragged deeply on his cigarette, lifted his head, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “He’s reputed to be an art collector, although I don’t know of anyone who’s actually seen the collection. It’s said to be as eccentric as he is, and consists mainly of—Can you guess?”

“Yeah,” said Reuben, “but go ahead and tell us.”

Doc nodded. “It consists mainly of statuary taken from ancient tombs, and icons of various Chinese gods and goddesses of immortality.” He smiled, uncovering his long brown teeth. “It seems the Godfather has a fascination with death.”

Grace was jubilant. “That’s him, Reuben, that’s our man! It has to be. Can you get a message to him?” she asked Doc.

“Probably.” He rolled his eyes back to Reuben. “For a price.”

“Always a price,” he grumbled, doubly irked because of the suspicion that if he weren’t here, Doc would’ve done it for Grace for nothing.

“What message would you like me to convey?”

Grace started to answer, but Reuben cut her off. “Tell him we have something he needs. Tell him the price will be very high, but he’ll find it worth his while because it completes a collection he recently acquired.” “Very good. And if he asks who sent the message?” Reuben thought for a second, then smiled. “Tell him the owners of the tiger.”

“Let’s go to Chinatown.”

“Now?”

“Why not?” Grace slipped her arm through Reuben’s and got him moving east, toward Stockton Street. “It’s this way, isn’t it?”

He nodded. “Haven’t you ever been there before?”

“No, and I’ve always wanted to go. When Henri and I were here two years ago, he wouldn’t take me. He said it was too dangerous.”

“Two years ago? You live in the Russian Valley, and you haven’t been to the city in two years?”

“About that.”

“Why so long, Gus?” He pulled her out of the way of a turning ice wagon, and they stepped back up on the curb at Clay Street. “Life at the vineyard’s so idyllic, you can’t bring yourself to leave?”

Grace thought about what her life was like at Willow Pond. Despite her miserable adolescence, she’d always loved the farm. But it wasn’t the old white house or the increasingly barren fields that had kept her and Henry from visiting San Francisco for the last two years. It was hard to remember now exactly what she’d told Reuben about Henry; she had an idea she’d told him conflicting stories, which wasn’t at all like her. She gave a mental shrug and decided to tell the truth for once. “Henri’s not allowed in San Francisco anymore. Or …” Better rephrase that. “He’s been asked not to return.”

Reuben halted in the middle of the sidewalk and stared at her. “Who asked him not to return?”

“Some men. Respectable men. City fathers, you might say.”

“Why?”

“Because. He embarrassed them.”

Understanding made him break into a grin. “You mean he swindled ’em! Right? But they can’t admit it because it was an illegal racket to begin with. Am I right?”

The grin was so engaging it tempted her to say yes. She resisted. “He embarrassed them,” she repeated. “Anyway, now he can’t go into the city.” She pressed her lips together to make it clear that that was all he was going to get out of her.

They started walking again. “Is that why Sister Augustine had to collect charitable donations on her own?” he asked.

“Partly. That and Henri’s heart,” she remembered to say.

“Oh, yeah. That bum ticker.”

“So,” she resumed, “will you take me to Chinatown?”

“Sure, if you really want to go.”

“You mean—it isn’t dangerous?” If not, she wasn’t sure she wanted to go after all.

“Not particularly. Not for Caucasians in the daytime, and probably not much at night either.”

“No?”

“Most Chinese are scared to death of us,” he explained, taking her hand to negotiate through the foot traffic at Joice Street. “We’re
fan kwei
—foreign devils. Besides, the hoodlums and hatchet men in Chinatown can rob and assault each other, kill each other in broad daylight, and the cops will almost always look the other way. But let a Chinese guy lift his pinkie finger against a white man, and the law’s all over him.”

“But that’s not fair.”

“No, it isn’t. Haven’t you heard the saying about a Chinaman’s chance?” He stopped walking. “Here’s Stockton Street, Gus; this is where it starts. What do you want to see?”

“Everything,” she decided. It was raw and windy, a typical wretched San Francisco summer day. She drew her cape tighter around her shoulders and started off north on Stockton, her wrist tucked under Reuben’s arm, intrigued already by the novelty of everything around her. The streets and sidewalks were packed with pedestrians, and every shop looked full of customers; everyplace she looked was animate with moving or lounging humanity.

“It’s all so quaint,” she marveled, eyeing a string of whole fish, heads and all, hung out on a wash line in the alley between two narrow buildings. They were walking past a cobbler’s shop, next door to an herbalist’s, and the odors of leather and spices and musk combined in an indescribable mixture that embodied, in her impressionable mind, the essence of this alien neighborhood. “The newspapers always print lurid stories about evil characters slinking through dark alleys bent on foul deeds—but it’s just people, isn’t it? Trying to make a living.” Reuben made an ambivalent sound. “No, but what’s sinister about it? Look, a shrine.”

“It’s a joss house,” he told her; they stopped in front of a queer-looking building, painted red and gold, and through the carved door they could see statues and images made of wood and tinsel. The odor of burning sandalwood wafted toward them; deep in the black recesses of the shrine, a dark-robed woman was lighting what looked like sparking firecrackers. “They’re everywhere, these temples,” said Reuben. , “This one’s to the goddess of walkers, actors, sailors, and whores.” Grace sent him a look. “It is,” he insisted. “Her name’s T’ien Hou, and she protects travelers.”

“And prostitutes classify as travelers?”

“Sure. They’re streetwalkers, aren’t they?”

They moved on, and within half a block of the joss house she spied a woman who looked as if the goddess of streetwalkers might very well be looking out for her. “Was that a prostitute?” she whispered, turning to stare over her shoulder at the young girl they’d just passed in a doorway.

“Probably.”

“How can you tell?”

“Mathematics, for one thing. The ratio of men to women in Chinatown is about thirty to one. And not many of the girls here are wives.”

“Oh.”

“Besides, she was wearing the cheongsam, the slit-skirted dress most of the whores wear. They call them singsong girls. Most of them are here illegally, sold into slavery by their families in Canton or Hong Kong.”

Shocked, she glanced over her shoulder again, but the woman in the doorway had disappeared. “Why don’t the police stop it? If that girl’s a slave, why doesn’t she run away?”

“Sometimes they do run away, but they’re usually caught, and then punished for it in ways you don’t want to know about. The Methodists run a mission here, and sometimes a girl will escape and take refuge there. But as often as not, the
boo how doy
send the police after her with an arrest warrant, claiming she stole her own clothes or the jewelry she’s wearing, some bauble a customer gave her. Honest Chinese people never interfere in the slave trade because they’re terrified of the tongs. Girls can bring as much as two or three thousand dollars on the block, which means the hatchet sons take a dim view of anybody who tries to crimp the trade.”

“You mean nobody tries to stop it?” She’d read about the slave trade, but the stories were so detestable she’d shrugged them off as exaggerated and sensationalized. “The police don’t do anything? That’s appalling. Disgusting.” She looked around at the tiny flats and blank-faced alleys they were passing; no singsong girls were in sight at the moment, but she imagined them inside their squalid cribs, plying their unsavory trade. Mark Wing, she remembered, owned the brothel next door to his own house. The thought sharpened her aversion to him. Good: it was easier to gouge somebody, she’d found, if you could work up a strong, healthy dislike for him beforehand.

They stopped in front of a goldsmith’s shop to watch the owner making jewelry at a work table in the window. Grace kept waiting for him to look up, maybe smile at them—they were potential customers, after all—but he never did. He knew they were there, though, she could tell. They drifted on past the sweetmeats dealer and the dried-fish seller. At the corner, a huddle of men were sitting on the sidewalk in front of a hockshop, placidly playing checkers. They had on the same loose-fitting, dark blue blouses and baggy trousers that all Chinese men seemed to wear, with black felt fedoras or skullcaps, and long, skinny pigtails. One of the men looked up, and quickly away again when Grace caught his eye. She had the impression that she and Reuben were safe here, but not particularly welcome. She thought of Ah You, Henry’s houseboy, whom she’d known for as long as she’d known Henry—six years. She tried to imagine him here in Chinatown, hustling to make some kind of living on the mean, dirty streets. It was impossible; she could only think of him at Willow Pond, spouting his pseudo-Confucian sayings and puncturing Henry’s self-esteem with exaggerated obsequiousness.

Reuben caught her hand and swung it between them in his big one. She smiled up at him, thinking how funny it felt to be strolling through Chinatown hand in hand, like a couple of out-of-town sightseers. Honeymooners, maybe. The funny part wasn’t how odd it felt, though, but how
natural.

The street they were on narrowed to an alley and finally ended in a vile-smelling courtyard. They turned around and retraced their steps, passing countless smaller alleys and side streets, all dark and dismal-looking even though it was just past noon. How easy it would be to get lost in this labyrinth of dirty, identical-looking narrow lanes. A sign on the brick building they were passing said “St. Louis Alley” in English, under Chinese characters, and Grace pulled on Reuben’s arm to stop him. “Look,” she said, pointing, “it’s another joss house.” She started toward it, but Reuben pulled her back. She looked at him in surprise.

“I’ve heard of this place,” he said shortly, his face grim. “St. Louis Alley. You know what’s under this temple?” She shook her head. “The barracoon. It’s a detention house—the Queen’s Room, they call it. It’s where the highbinders bring slave girls after their ships dock at the Embarcadero. They sell, them here.”

“No.”

“Yes. Strip them first, so the buyers can see what they’re bidding on. Sometimes they’ve been beaten, sometimes branded with hot irons. They hardly ever kill them, though, because they’re too valuable.”