Crooked Hearts (23 page)

“Scared,” Grace tried to say. “Skth” came out of her mouth. She gave up. White hair, a dove’s wing brushing her throat, soothing. “
Augustine,”
in her ear, a hot heated whisper.
Call me Gus, Reuben does.
“Reuben” fell out of her mouth like marbles, like coins.
Oh, God, Reuben!

“Lie still, my opal. Wait for the blisss, for it will come. Ahhh.” Pale face looming, hair draping, teeth gleaming. “Dost thou know how often I’ve dreamt of thee? The white-skinned woman. The golden-haired woman. I knew who you were the moment I saw you. The vision—my wife, beside me, enthroned, while at our feet our strong sons play like lion cubs.”

Grace lifted a long, stern forefinger in the air to point something out. What was it, though? Oh. “Barking up the wrong tree,” garbled around the limp thickness of her tongue.

Wing smiled: a wonderful joke. Kai Yee, Godfather; Ah Mah, Mother. Thin lips pursed, puckered, sucked her pointing finger inside the black wet cave of his mouth. Revulsion, snakes twisting in her belly—and then a shocking liquid change.
Touch,
she thought. Said?
Touch me.
Evil knowing eyes sparkled, flicked down, aware. The suave fumble of fingers at her breast … cloth tearing so slowly … warm air on warm, shamed skin. His hands.
Touch
—
don’t touch.
Oh, God, his hands …

The woman again, girl servant. With a pipe, a candle, metal wire. Flame crackle, burning poppy smoke—“No! Bastard, bastard—” No use. Fire in her throat, chest burning, eyes streaming—and some of the poison sneaked in, she could feel it slink, slither, curl like a worm in her skull.

The Godfather, filled with the poison, rose over her, white moon face glimmering. “Wait for me, golden one, my dahlia. I will go and prepare myself for thee. Wait for thy husband. Patience”—the hiss of a snake. She shuddered. But his lips opened hers, and she took the long slide of his tongue like a lover.

Stillness. Behind her closed eyelids, fires flickered. Her blood had become lighter than air. She dreamed that she was rising above the bed, floating through the ceiling, up through the blue air of the sky, higher and higher until everything in the universe spread out beneath her like a rug. With exquisite indifference, she understood it all, every detail. Everything was clear; everything was revealed. A huge philosophical work took shape in her mind, long, unfolding links of thought, a great synthesis of all knowledge that would explain everything in existence. She couldn’t wait to tell everybody.

But … something was happening … something in the room with the bed … Oh, yes—Wing was coming back. Because he was her husband, and he was preparing.

She opened her eyes and lifted her head. Nobody there.
I’m safe.
Safe on the river-bed of scarlet silk, crimson silk, arms tight in the sleeves of her dress, bare-shouldered, bare-breasted—

A wash of horror suddenly prickled her skin everywhere, drenching her. She threw her body up and out of the river, and landed hard on the bank, scrabbled to her feet, lurched to the door. Locked. Walls, curtains, scrolls, hangings, drapes. “Well, Goddamn it!” It rang in her throat like a bell, wonderfully clear and outraged.
Where the hell is the goddamn window?

There, past waterfalls of dangerous silk, sly as a strangler’s hands. Her fingers clutched wood; her muscles hardened, and the sash flew up, up. She staggered and caught herself on the sill, smacking her ribs. Light from the room gleamed on a metal grid outside—fire escape! “Oh, help me!” Sobbing, diving, hands grappling wood, knees flexed—

“No, my lady. No, my lady.” Gentle arms pulled softly, insistent.

Grace screamed. But it wasn’t Kai Yee, it was the girl, the servant.

“Help me?”

“Yes.”

“Help me.”

“Yes, my lady. Come.” Docile, hopeless, she let the girl lead her away from the window toward the bed. Bridal bed.
Damn.
Slow tears trickled down when the girl, whose hands were gentle as birds, unfastened Grace’s torn dress and eased it down to the floor. Shift next, petticoats, then shoes, stockings.
Reuben, where are you?

“Lie,” said the girl, and Grace lay.

“Help me.” One last pathetic try. Cold silk on her spine warmed insidiously.

“Here is help,” said the girl. “I tell you: don’t fight. Understand? Best help—give up.”

11

Death: to stop sinning suddenly.

—Elbert Hubbard

“Y
OU OKAY, BOSS?
O
KAY
now?”

“OW,
quit it. Get your—ow!”

“So sorry, boss! Okay now? You want drink? Want girl? All on house! Boss feel better now, okay?”

Snarling, cradling his head with both hands, Reuben hoisted himself to a sitting position on a squishy velvet sofa that smelled like dirty clothes and rancid perfume. Two men hovered over him, chattering to each other in worried-sounding Chinese, while a middle-aged woman in a voluminous black gown tried to press a wet, vinegary-smelling cloth to his temple. He batted her hand away and glared at all three, unappeased by the anxiety in then round faces. “What happened? Who the … uhhh.” He gritted his teeth against the stunning pain. “Who the hell hit me?”

Nobody raised his hand, but the taller of the worried-looking Chinese men said, “So sorry, boss, big mistake,” and hung his head.

The woman rose from beside the couch and made him a low, abject bow. “Plees accept apologies for terrible error. You white gentleman, very fine sir. Sometime bad men sneak in house in back, take favors from girls, not pay. We keep watch. Dark tonight, make big mistake. You okay now—no police. Feel like glass plum wine, any girl you want? Got special very young virgin, father big prince in China. You like?”

The cotton stuffing inside his brain thinned to let a little light in, enough to get him on his feet and ask weakly, “What time is it?”

“Plenty time, early, have good—”

“What time is it?”
He clutched at his head, fighting the return of the stuffing, swaying.

“Ten-thirty.”

“Ten …” He took, his hands away and stared in horror. They grabbed at him when he tried to bull his way through their solicitous semicircle to the door. “Move! Move, damn it!” They fell back, and he charged outside.

He had to halt in the grainy mist and reckon where he was. He’d come out the front door of the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment—so the murky yellow light forty feet to his right had to be the entrance to Wing’s house. Racing toward it, he tripped and slammed his knee on the wet sidewalk. He cursed foully, but the shock helped clear his head.

The dragon knocker set up a hell of a racket. He hammered it harder, louder, wishing it was a weapon. The heavy portal finally cracked open, and In Re stuck his head out.

“Yes?”

“Grace was here—Miss Smith, she was here visiting Wing. Did she leave yet?”

“Nobody here by that name.”

“You mean she left?”

“No Smith come, no lady.” He started to close the door.

“Hold it! She was here—the same woman who came with me yesterday. I saw you let her in, she—Hey!” In Re got the door an inch away from the latch before Reuben could get his foot in the threshold and stop it. “Listen, you son of a bitch! Open the door, open it or I’ll—”

“Yes?” With the speed and ease of a farmer scything grass, In Re brought up a nine-inch scimitar, and made a frame for Reuben’s throat in its gleaming crescent.

Reuben lifted both hands in the air, palms out: an outclassed dog rolling over, telling the big one he gave up. Very gently, In Re closed the door in his face.

He made it to the sidewalk before he had to stop and grab for his knees, head dangling between his legs. From experience, he knew that if he thought about the knife, saw in his mind the silvery edge, sharp as a hair, or imagined the curved blade slicing across flesh—a fingertip, a cheek—oh, God, a
tongue
—he would either faint, vomit, or start screaming.

He took his hands off his knees in slow degrees, straightened, and gulped in a great chestful of the cool night air. With the next gulp, he shouted, “Grace!” at the top of his lungs.

Silence.

Hands cupped around his mouth:
“Grace!”

No answer.

She wouldn’t have gone home by herself, she’d have waited for him. So she was still in the house. Wing had her.

They were surprised to see him again so soon at the House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment. “Esteemed sir,” exclaimed the black-gowned madam, grinning falsely and wringing her hands, glancing behind him to see if he’d brought any cops. “You feel okay now? Sorry, sorry, many—”

“I need a girl,” he panted, “any girl. That one—I want her.” A small, homely thing, trying to hide behind the red sofa he’d been stretched out unconscious on ten minutes ago.

“You like Toy Gun?” simpered the madam. “Sure, she’s for you. On the house. You want whiskey, we send up—”

“Yeah, later.” He advanced on Toy Gun, who was trying not to cringe, and looking as if a large, wild-eyed white devil was not her idea of a good time. She was too docile to fight him when he grabbed her hand, though, and she let him hustle her out of the parlor and up the gaslit staircase to the second floor without a chirp. Behind them, the madam and the two bouncers who’d carried him inside the house called up jovial encouragement and best wishes for his health and happiness.

Toy Gun tried to stop at a closed door midway down the hall that ran the length of the brothel, front to back. “My room,” she got out, pointing, but Reuben kept going, pulling her along behind him. As he’d hoped, there was another staircase at the back of the house, servants’ stairs, since they were darker and narrower than the ones in front. The girl started protesting in Chinese when he jostled her in front of him and trotted her up the steps. “Third floor,” he muttered behind her, “I want the third floor, gotta have it. Hurry, hurry.”

Another dim hallway, lined with closed doors, behind one of which he heard a man’s loud, drunken laughter. To the right of the landing, a short, dark corridor ended at a black door with a window in the top half, covered with a bead curtain. Toy Gun balked when he drew her away from the landing and into the alcove. “Nah! Nah!” she wailed, trying to tell him he was going the wrong way. Ignoring her, he turned the doorknob. Locked. Toy Gun went white and stopped wailing when he reached in his pocket and pulled out Grace’s little two-shooter. Using the barrel, he bashed a hole in the window, flinching at the noise the glass made when it shattered. Through the jagged hole, his hand found the key in the lock and twisted it. “Come on,” he told his shrinking captive, and towed her through the door.

He got her about three steps down the new hall before she skidded to a stop and dug her heels in, refusing to be moved. “Nah, nah, nah!” she started up again, in a high-pitched whine.

Reuben hunkered down to bring his face to her level. “Kai Yee,” he whispered menacingly. The two words reduced her to shuddering, terrified silence. “Where is he? Take me to him. Take me to Kai Yee.” She rolled her eyes and shook her head, and kept shaking it until, in desperation, he brought the derringer back out and waved it at her. The poor girl’s teeth were chattering; her hand trembled like a palsied old woman’s, but she got it up and out, and pointed vaguely down the carpeted hall and to the right. “Where? Show me,” he demanded. But she was just too scared. Giving her a frustrated pat on the shoulder, he left her standing there, frozen to the spot and—he hoped—too frightened to scream. At least for a minute or two.

Unlike the hallway in the whorehouse next door, all the doors here were open, and they were all dark. He hoped that meant they were all empty. Toy Gun had pointed to the right. Thirty feet away he could see a staircase; just beyond it, light spilled out of a doorway onto the thick Persian carpet. Crouching, booted footsteps muffled by the rug, Reuben moved toward the light.

Voices from the second floor drifted up the stairs on the odor of incense. He didn’t pause, didn’t even glance down as he passed. Flattening his back against the wall, he listened intently, but could hear no sound coming from the lighted room. He checked the pint-size derringer in his palm, and hoped he wouldn’t shoot a finger off if he had to use it. One deep breath. Using his right foot for a pivot, he spun into the doorway.

A woman screamed. Not Grace—Grace was spread out buck naked on a huge canopied bed, propped up on her elbows and smiling at him. The other one—the one who’d shuffled in and out with tea yesterday—she was the screamer. She shut her mouth when she saw the gun, and when Reuben moved toward her, she moved back.

“Hi,” said Grace.

“Gus, damn it, get up and get your clothes on!”

“Okay.” She slid her legs over the side of the bed, but when she tried to stand up, her knees buckled and she sank very slowly, very gracefully, to the floor. “Uh-oh,” she said worriedly, blinking down at her lap, her bent knees, her splayed fingers on the rug, as if she couldn’t figure out how she’d gotten there.

Jesus Christ God Almighty. She was drunk.

When he moved toward her, swearing viciously, the little maid ran behind him and bolted out the door. He let her go, concentrating on Grace. “Where’d you put your clothes?” he said roughly, pocketing the gun and kneeling beside her. Her head lolled back, a heavy flower on a too-thin stalk, and banged the bed frame. She didn’t even notice. He took her by the shoulders and gave her a shake. “Come on, Gus, where’s your dress? What’d you do with your shoes?” There wasn’t a stitch of clothing in the orange, opulent, overdone room that he could see, except for a yellow dressing gown that the servant girl had dropped on the floor before she ran.

He got his hands under Grace’s arms and hauled her up so that her behind was perched on the edge of the bed. When he let go she lunged for him, winding her arms around his neck. “Oh, Reuben,” she sighed, trying to kiss him. “I’m so glad you came.” He dodged her mouth, and she settled for his cheek, planting a noisy smacker on him while she pushed her breasts against his chest.