China Trade (12 page)

“Those classes are free, aren’t they? And the basketball league too.”

“Free sure, don’t pay. Got no money to pay. Bakery business not so good.” His voice took on the tone of a complaint, as
if to prepare me for being turned down when I hit him up for a donation.

“They have a museum there that’s also free,” I said. “Did you know that?”

“Don’t know it.” He shook his head.

“Well, it is. They don’t charge money for any of their services. They’re gifts for families like yours, because they want you to have what they can give you. They give gifts, but now they need help.”

His eyes narrowed. “What kind help?”

“Just the answers to some questions.”

“Don’t know anythings.”

“You may know more than you think. Will you just listen to my questions? For the people at Chinatown Pride? I’m working for them.”

Now I had him. Now he was stuck. Accepting a gift puts you under an obligation to the giver; his reaction to my trial-balloon compliment had let me know he would take that obligation seriously. He clearly didn’t want to talk to me, but, just as clearly, he felt he had to.

Now just don’t step over the line, Lydia, I told myself. Just don’t get cocky because you’re so smart.

“There was a robbery there three nights ago. Have you heard about it?” I hadn’t waited for him to agree to answer, but I knew he would.

“No. Not heard.”

“Well, some things were stolen from their basement. Porcelains,” I said, watching my teacup turn in my hand. “Very beautiful ones. They would like to have them back.”

“Anyone lose something, want it back,” the proprietor said cautiously.

“That’s true,” I agreed. “And interesting to discuss. If I knew who had these porcelains, I could have an interesting discussion with them.”

“Well,” he said, sounding relieved, “hope you find out, then.”

The relief was because he’d been able to answer me without
either lying or giving anything away. Okay; I’d made the offer. Maybe something would come of it, maybe not. In a quiet voice that didn’t carry beyond our table at all, I asked, “Who collects your lucky money? The Golden Dragons?”

Looking alarmed, he glanced around, behind, at the door. Then, without looking at me, he shook his head.

“The Main Street Boys,” I said, still just above a whisper. “When did they take over?”

He shrugged. “Few months. Don’t remember.”

“What happened? They just came in one day and said, ‘We’re in charge now’? It was that easy?”

“Easy?” His eyes suddenly flared; I was surprised. “Not easy! Golden Dragons come, I pay. Main Street Boys come, I pay. Then some Golden Dragons comes back, say, Main Street Boys go to hell, you pay us. Too much money! Bakery business not so good!”

I’d hit a nerve. I guess the bakery business was not so good. “What did you do? Do you pay them both now?”

His round head shook slowly back and forth. “Complained.”

“Complained? To the police?”

“No no no. Police.” He winked to show he understood my ridiculous joke. “Find someone told me how find Golden Dragons’
dai lo
.”

“You went to him yourself?” That showed a streak of courage I might not have expected. But people always surprise me.

“Sure I went. Say, ‘Who I pay? Not both!’ ”

“And?”

“He tells, ‘Main Street Boys. My boys don’t coming back.’ ”

“And do they?”

“No. No more Golden Dragons. Main Street Boys only, every months.”

“How much do you pay them?”

“Hundred dollar! Too much money!”

It sounded like a lot to me, too.

But it wasn’t so much that Chinatown Pride couldn’t have handled it.

T
H I R T E E N

T
hat was how it went all morning. Six businesses in each direction from the corner on both sides of the street seemed to be about the limit of the Main Street Boys’ sublet. I hit the second-floor operations, too, the doctors and travel agents and CPAs. The story was the same, and I averaged maybe one in four people willing to tell it. I didn’t push anybody. I wanted the word out that I was interested and could be reached. I didn’t want to appear to be in the muscle business myself. CP wanted their porcelains back, and if I had to make a deal to get them I’d do it.

Though if someone had handed me the name of the thief and some hard evidence, like fingerprints, that could have locked him up, I wouldn’t have turned it down.

After a couple of hours of sitting in waiting rooms or leaning over counters I was down to three more places. The first of them was a restaurant. I took that as a sign. The smell of garlic and black beans almost knocked me over as I pushed through the door, so I ordered shrimp in black bean sauce and gave myself half an hour off.

I called Bill from the pay phone by the door, to see how his day was coming, but he wasn’t there. By the time I got back to my table my tea was waiting for me, and by the time I was halfway through the first cup my food arrived, plunked down by a harried and surly waiter. By the time I opened my mouth to say thank you he’d charged back into the kitchen again.

This place—Lucky Seafood—was small, unatmospheric,
and sort of a dive, but still at least half the customers were white. Lawyers from the courts and city workers from the area around City Hall, which both border Chinatown, wielded chopsticks with practiced ease, talking, eating, and thrusting the sticks at each other to emphasize important points. They passed the platters of breaded pork and jade scallops so everyone could scoop some onto their plates. The tables of Chinese ate the way I did, reaching across each other onto the stationary platters for the morsels they wanted, dropping pieces into their rice bowls so the rice could soak up the sauce. The lawyers and city workers didn’t eat out of the rice bowls, but scooped rice, also, out onto their plates.

The restaurant, with its plastic-laminate tabletops and tin ceiling, was noisy, here at the heart of lunch hour. The sound of the white voices was lower and slower, the Chinese higher, quicker, more insistent. I eavesdropped idly on as many conversations in both languages as I could manage, but I didn’t hear anything so compelling that it distracted me from my shrimp.

When I was finished I sat back, sipped my tea, and thought about where to go from here. I’d need to converse with the remaining shopkeepers, including the one who ran this place, just so I could say I’d been thorough. And then, depending on whether Bill had turned anything up, I really really wanted to meet this Bic.

The waiter brought my check and my fortune cookie. I was a little insulted about the cookie; usually they save them for the
low faan
. I opened it anyway.

Patience, it told me, is the key to joy.

Good, I thought, I’ll have to remember to tell that to Bill next time he comes on to me.

I took out some cash and waited for the waiter. As he took the money and the check I asked to see the boss.

The waiter gave me a curious look, as though I were something interesting to see. I discounted it; maybe at Lucky Seafood no one ever had anything to say to the boss.

“Sure,” he said. “You go this way.” He pointed to the swinging doors into the kitchen.

I did think it was strange that he didn’t go back and check with the boss first. For one thing, the boss might not want to see me. For another, I might be with the Health Department, in which case the boss might not want to see me wandering through the kitchen all by myself. But maybe the kitchen at Lucky Seafood was so faultless that a surprise visit from an inspector was no problem at all.

I thought all that, but no warning bell went off in my head, no little voice suggested that, in the absence of anyone else to do it, I should be watching my own back.

I just gathered up my things, pocketed the fortune from the cookie, and marched through the kitchen doors.

And into Trouble.

He and three of his boys—gelled hair, black leather jackets, no socks—were lounging against the stainless steel counter in the cramped kitchen, picking boiled baby shrimp out of a bowl, spitting shell fragments on the floor.

The rich aromas of simmering sauces were overpowered by the stinging smells of ammonia and soap in the small, bright, crowded room. Trouble and I stared at each other, wordless. I felt my face rearrange itself in astonishment. His didn’t. He smiled a sneering smile as the eyes of the others swept over me in a way I could almost feel, a way that made me want to sock them.

“So.” Trouble smirked. “Little private eye must lost. Door to leave Lucky Seafood back that way.”

“You’re right,” I said. “I went the wrong way. Nice seeing you.” I turned calmly, right into one of the boys, who held a nine-millimeter automatic a foot from my chest.

I turned back to Trouble. I hadn’t really thought that was going to work.

“Okay,” I said. “Now what?”

“Since you here, maybe we talk.”

“About what?”

“Private talk.”

One of the others clamped his hand, greasy with shrimp, on my jacket sleeve. I swung my arm sharply up and over, broke the grip. For a second I considered a front kick to the gun and a dash for the door, but I didn’t have room for much of a kick, and it probably wasn’t the only gun. The kitchen help in this tiny room were standing, silent and riveted, pressed against walls as far away as they could get. They knew better than to leave—that might look as though they were going for help—and they knew better than to help.

“Tell them to keep their stinking hands off me,” I ordered Trouble, in the voice of someone used to being obeyed and totally unafraid. I wondered whose voice it was. “What the hell do you want?”

“Just private talk, little private eye. Outside, where pots don’t got ears.”

Well, there’d be more room outside for me to maneuver, too. And maybe someone who saw us from a window, where they could be anonymous, would call a cop.

So I went outside with the Golden Dragons, to the courtyard behind the kitchen of the Lucky Seafood restaurant. Other restaurants opened into this courtyard too, and different kinds of stores, and the back hallways of apartment buildings, but nothing opened into it right now.

The sun, angling overhead, cut sharp shadows from the garbage cans and back stoops and meaningless piles of junk strewn around here. Trouble cast a shadow too, and his boys, and they all pointed toward me. Mine, hiding behind me, pulled away from them, as far as it could.

“Well?” I said, trying to sound impatient.

“Little private eye spending a lot of time this block, this morning,” Trouble began unhurriedly.

“I had shopping to do. What do you care?”

“Shopping,” he scoffed. “Shopping for porcelains.”

“I’m in the market.” I was cautious. “You knew that.” Don’t look interested, Lydia, I told myself. Don’t look anxious. He’ll let you know if he wants to make a deal.

“Get out.”

“What?”

“Get out that market. Little private eye don’t want porcelains more.”

“Why wouldn’t I?”

“Porcelains,” Trouble said. “Robbery. Golden Dragons, Main Street Boys. All this don’t matter to little private eye now.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No.” He stepped closer to me. “No, they don’t. No more questions, no more bother people.”

I was curious. “Why do you care?”

In a flash he’d backhanded me across the mouth hard enough to send me staggering. I tasted salty blood, but an adrenaline rush drowned the pain I knew I’d feel later.

“See,” I heard Trouble say, as I grabbed a garbage can to keep from falling, “too many questions.”

Hot fury filled me. Some black belt, Lydia! You didn’t even see it coming.

“Hurts?” Trouble’s voice sounded concerned.

“No.” I let go of the garbage can, straightened to face him again.

“Why you crying?”

“I’m not,” I snarled. It’s true my eyes were tearing from the blow, but that didn’t count.

“Little private eye like to be tough,” Trouble grinned, talking to his boys. “How tough you think?”

“Oh, I think she’s real tough,” the one with the greasy hands snickered. He had no trace of a Chinese accent: ABC, like me. “Too tough to be tasty. I think we’d better soften her up.” His slimy hands curled into tight fists at his sides as he started forward.

“Hold on, Jimmy,” Trouble said easily. “I do this, I think so.”

Jimmy looked disappointed, but he shrugged and stepped back. “Now,” said Trouble to me, “maybe we don’t hurt you too much, little private eye. Just enough show you how stupid, asking questions Trouble don’t want you ask.”

“Which questions?” Oh, shut up, Lydia! I told myself, but I couldn’t do it. “Yesterday you didn’t care—”

His fist whipped out again but this time I was ready. I blocked it overhead, came in low, slammed my fist into his stomach and the heel of my palm up into his nose. He tottered back with a muffled sound and I swung to the side to be ready for the guys who were sure to be coming at me.

They were. I stopped the first with a flying side kick. As I delivered it, and the roundhouse that brought down the next, I howled my loudest, bloodiest yells. I wanted to concentrate my
chi
and focus my power; I also wanted anyone with windows on this courtyard to know I was in trouble out here.

Those two went down but I misjudged the next guy. He dove low, under the kick I had for him. I caught him on the shoulder but it didn’t matter. He clamped onto my standing leg as I brought the kick down. The buildings spun crazily as I flew backwards, crashed to the pavement on my back with him clinging to my ankle like a lead weight tail on a kite. I doubled up to reach him, pounded my elbow against his temple twice, three times. My angle was bad but my power was good: His grip loosened. I yanked my foot free and started to stand.

A tremendous crashing noise, like the firecrackers and bass drums of New Year’s Day, exploded all around me. A pounding weight of pain crushed my back, my head. The asphalt came swirling up and met me with a dull thud. I lay, willing my legs and arms to move, but they wouldn’t.

A far-off voice, Trouble’s, rasped through the black-edged fog I was fighting. “Little bitch private eye! Stupid, stupid bitch! Teach you more than lesson now—teach you keep away from Trouble, keep away from Golden Dragons, little bitch!”