The Girl with Ghost Eyes (21 page)

An old man sat on the corner, playing music. The mournful sound of his erhu made me feel doomed, like the whole world was drowning.

“Pretty girl,” the old man called to me. He gave me a gentle smile that had no teeth. “Let me play you a song.”

I stopped and looked at him. There was so much to read on his face. A wrinkle below the mouth showed me someone who frowned often. The crinkles behind his eyes denoted laughter.

“Is it a happy song?” I asked.

“I know some happy songs.”

“Tomorrow,” I said. “I will come back tomorrow and ask you to play me a happy song.”

I bowed to the old man and walked deeper into Xie Liang territory. Maybe I was throwing my life away for an old man playing an erhu, but I wanted to hear a happy song. If Liu Qiang were to raise the Kulou-Yuanling, the musician would die and I’d never get to hear his happy song.

I smiled at my own foolishness. For a happy song, I had decided to go to war with the Ansheng tong.

I was wearing the full outfit of a Daoshi—yellow robes embroidered with black trigrams, and a square black hat. I would walk into Bok Choy’s headquarters and no one would mistake me for a contract girl. I had decided to let them see me as powerful, a person of consequence, who must be taken seriously.

“Are you lost, little girl?” called a young man with a cruel face. Beside him, two friends laughed.

“Are you with the Xie Liang tong?” I asked.

The three of them stood in front of me, barring my path. “Why does it matter to you?”

I touched the pocket where I kept my rope dart. I might need it. “I want to talk with Bok Choy.”

The young men glanced at each other uncertainly, and then the hatchet-faced youth spoke again. “What do you want with him, little girl?”

I sighed. Such a juvenile way to taunt me. “If I don’t talk to Bok Choy, his gambling halls will burn, his brothels will lie in wreckage. The Xie Liang tong will be no more, and each man who refuses to acknowledge the power of the Ansheng will be hunted down and shamed, broken, or killed. Bok Choy will probably be allowed to live, but the Anshengs will cripple him, cripple his arms and legs, so he will have to earn his living as a beggar, selling listeners the story of how he rose to such a height and fell so far so fast,” I said. “And all this will come to pass, and it will come to pass tonight, if you do not bring me to him, right now.”

The young men had gone as pale as corpses. They exchanged glances, and then the first one spoke again. “We’ll take you to him,” he said.

*

There were no talismans over the door. No Door Gods, nothing to protect against spells or spirits. That was odd. Foolish of them, to leave their business so exposed. Goblins, ghosts, and curses had free rein to wreck the place.

The young men led me down a flight of stairs and into a big, poorly lit chamber. In the dim room, I could see men gambling at the tables, playing fantan, pai jiu, and ma jiang, as well as white people games with playing cards and dice. “Wait here,” hatchet-face said to me. “I’ll go talk to him.”

I watched the faces of the men at the gaming tables. There was so much hope, and also so much devastation. I saw excitement, but I also saw exhaustion—the exhaustion that comes from living for small victories, forever waiting for the next one.

Tiles clinked on the tables, and dice rolled. I heard the sound of pouring liquid and looked over to see a woman serving rice wine to a group of gamblers. She wore American makeup, but the brightness of her face, the relaxation in her posture, and a gentle sense of contentment made her shine with an inner beauty. Behind red lips, rouged cheeks, and shadowed eyes, she had the bearing and expression of a woman who is profoundly loved. I had looked that way once. Yet here she was, looking a few years older than me, and still she radiated.

The waitress met my eyes with a curious look. Who are you, her eyes seemed to be asking, what are you? I wondered the same. But I realized who she was. For such a beautiful woman to circulate among gangsters without being bothered, she could only be the boss’s wife.

A whore was circulating among the men. Her dress was cut shorter than the ordinary style, and I saw men flirting with her. She turned, and I saw she was wearing a great deal of makeup.

And under the makeup, I could see, clearly, it was a man. I stared. In his face I saw something surprising. He didn’t look defeated.

We faced each other for a moment, and then he walked over to me. “Four bits to feel,” he said with a smile, “six bits to do.” He made no effort to conceal his male voice.

I blushed and looked down. “You,” I said to him, and looked back at his face, “you haven’t been doing this long?”

His face was smothered under makeup, and he began to laugh. “I’m the whore today,” he said. “I lost more bets than anyone else yesterday. Someone else will have to dress up as a whore tomorrow.”

I looked at him. “So you’re not really … six bits?”

“For you, I’d only charge four bits,” he said with a leer. I couldn’t help it, it was so absurd I broke out in laughter.

Then Bok Choy came charging out from a back room. It was hard to miss him. He was wearing a white American suit with diamonds glittering on the lapels. A short man and skinny, he moved quickly, as if he was rushing somewhere.

He saw me and smiled. Gold flashed among his teeth. I knew better than to trust this man’s smile. His hands fluttered like birds in motion. The whore of the day stepped back into the crowd.

“Let me see her, let me see,” he said to his men, and when they stepped aside he looked at me and laughed. “How precious,” he said, “how darling!”

I blinked. So this was Bok Choy, twitchy and failing to be charming, alive with spastic energy. I had gone to school with the missionaries, so I knew a little of the culture outside Chinatown, but I had no idea how I should behave around a tong leader in an American suit.

I bowed. “Mr. Choy,” I began, but his shrilling laughter cut me off.

“No need for us to be so formal,” he said. “But come on, let’s go somewhere private.”

I looked to his men for guidance. They only shrugged. I wondered if there was something wrong with him. He acted like a crazy man.

They led me to a room in the back. As soon as I stepped through the door, someone threw a net over me.

I never learned to grapple, so any one of the men could have wrestled me down. Especially since I was caught in a net and had been taken by surprise. But the Xie Liangs went in for overkill. Four or five men dragged me to the floor and held me there. A man held each arm and each leg, and a fifth man squatted on my hips. I struggled but it was useless under all their weight.

I felt terror come over me. I wanted to run but I couldn’t even move. I heard myself whimper in the net.

Bok Choy stood about six feet away, tapping his feet. He was wearing white American shoes. I watched from the ground, from inside the net, as another man walked close to me. He lowered his foot toward my face, and I turned my head to the side.

Apparently that was what he had wanted. His foot pinned my head in place, facing Bok Choy. I felt my teeth clench together, a feral expression. My muscles were tight all along my body, pressing hard against the weight that held me pinned.

Bok Choy lit a cigar. “I lost two dollars thanks to you,” he said in a nasal tone. “Everyone knew you were setting me up. My men Chicken and Locomotive—” he gestured to two of the men near him—“said you’d come here tonight, but I thought you would wait a day. We made a bet, and I lost.”

“What are you”—it isn’t easy to speak with a foot on your ear—“talking about?”

Bok Choy squatted down near me. “Mr. Wong sent you to kill me,” he said.

I groaned. People could be so stupid. Nothing made sense but the Dao.

“As soon as I heard that a girl beat up his son, I knew I was being set up.” He puffed on his cigar. “So you could get close enough to kill me.”

The stupidity of the accusation made me angry, but underneath the anger I felt so weary. By coming here to speak with the Xie Liang tong, I had betrayed my own people. And even the Xie Liangs considered me an enemy.

I felt the men tie my ankles together, winding the rope in and out of the netting, and then they tied my knees. “I didn’t,” I said, struggling to breathe, “come here … to kill you.”

Bok Choy laughed, and it was a shrill, deranged laugh. He gestured to his men and I felt them pull my arms in front of me, inside the net. They tied my wrists together, the rope weaving in and out of the mesh.

Cigar in hand, he leaned over and reached his arm out to me. “Would you like a puff?” he asked.

It was a nightmare. I was pinned to the floor and a madman was trying to get me to smoke his cigar. “What are you saying?” I asked.

“Come on, now,” he said, and gold glinted in his smile. “Just take one puff on my cigar.”

“Maybe later,” I said, to be polite. What kind of game was he playing?

He waited a few moments and then withdrew the cigar. He took a puff himself. “It’s a pity,” he said.

The door opened and someone came in. I heard a woman’s voice. “You wanted to see me?”

Bok Choy straightened up and said, “I always want to see you, darling dove,” he said. “But it would help me if you would search this girl for weapons.”

I heard footsteps, and felt a new pair of hands on me. A gentler touch moved down my arms, squeezing every inch of my sleeves. It was Bok Choy’s wife, whose beauty had astonished me. Her hands brushed down the front of my body. The men shifted positions to accommodate her. She removed the peachwood sword from my belt and the rope dart from my pocket. Her hands lingered over my thighs, where people commonly conceal knives. Her touch was thorough, careful, and businesslike. Then the men rolled me over onto my stomach and held me down so she could continue searching me. She started at my feet, frisking up along my body. She removed the bagua mirror from my back.

When she reached my head, she leaned over and whispered in my ear. “If he offers you a cigar, smoke it,” she said, soft as breathing, and then she withdrew.

“She couldn’t have said so before?” I muttered, glaring at her back as she walked out of the room.

The men pushed me onto my back again. They climbed onto me, keeping me pinned down with their weight. The man’s foot came down over my face again. I turned my head to the side and he pressed down, immobilizing me.

They were skillful. Experienced. They didn’t let me have control of any part of my body—not even my head.

I looked up at Bok Choy. His feet were tapping. A man’s foot pinned my head to the floor. Bok Choy shook his head and sighed. “You just cost me another dollar. I bet Chicken you’d be carrying knives.”

He lay down on his side and faced me. Bok Choy lounged in a mockery of my posture. I scowled at him.

He took a slow puff on his cigar, and then he blurred into a stream of movement.

I stared into dark, blurry circles. It took me a moment to realize what I was looking at.

Guns.

Bok Choy was aiming two pistols at my eyes.

I hate guns.

“I like you,” he told me. “I really like you. Normally you’d be dead by now. But I like you a lot. Do you know why I like you so much?”

Looking into the barrels of his guns, pinned in place, I felt small and frightened. I thought about men like Mr. Wong and his son, and I knew the answer to Bok Choy’s question.

“You like me because I’m powerless,” I said.

“Wrong!” he shouted, shaking the pistols in front of my eyes. “I like you because you remind me of my daughter.”

I reminded him of his daughter, and he was pointing guns in my eyes? I was baffled.

“A sorcerer is going to destroy your part of Chinatown,” I said.

The guns shook again. He giggled once more. The foot pressed down harder. I winced, my cheekbone forced to the wood floor.

It was too much. The foot in my face made me boil with rage. There’s only so much I can tolerate before I snap. “You,” I said, “the one with the foot in my face. I’m going to beat you to a pulp.”

The men laughed. The pistols withdrew. Bok Choy said, “Do you think you could?”

“What do you mean?” I said, staring into the gangster’s eager face. This man’s behavior had baffled me since the moment I met him.

“Do you think you could beat my man Chicken in a fight?”

I didn’t know. I didn’t know what he looked like, I didn’t know what training he might have had, and I didn’t know how young or old or good or fast he was. But fury had taken over and I wasn’t thinking. I was a bundle of anger. In the last few days I’d been tricked, attacked, pushed around, held down, tied up. And now I had a man’s foot in my face and I wanted to beat him until he wept and bled.

“Yes,” I said.

Bok Choy held out the cigar again. “A puff?” he asked.

Remembering what his wife had whispered, I said yes. He placed his cigar between my lips. I closed my mouth and puffed on his cigar.

I had expected the room to erupt in raunchy laughter, but there was silence.

Bok Choy withdrew his cigar and rose up to his feet again. “Let her go,” he told his men, “untie her.”

All at once the weight came off me. The rope was pulled free next, and then the net was removed. I sat up. It was nearly dizzying,
to be free to move again. I rubbed my wrists where the rope had bound them.

“A dollar on the girl,” said Bok Choy.

“You’re on a losing streak, Boss,” one of his men said. “You might be the whore tomorrow. I’ll take that bet.”

“Good,” said Bok Choy. “What are you waiting for?
Fight!”

20

I shot to my feet in time to duck below a powerful punch. Staggering back, I tried to regain my balance, but my leg hit a chair and I stumbled to the floor. The man kicked at my face. I dodged his kick, rolled to the side, grabbed the chair by its leg, and yanked it in front of me in time to block another kick. I turned the chair and caught his ankle between the chair’s legs, then I pushed it away from me, knocking him off balance. I sprang back up to my feet.

His side was facing me. I chambered my leg. Short, hard kicks to his ribs. One kick, two kicks, three. He groaned and stifled a cough.