Lost Among the Angels (A Mercy Allcutt Book) (12 page)

      “Nuts. You gotta stick up for yourself in this life, kid. Sure as hell, nobody else is going to do it for you.” He slowed down, though, and I appreciated him for it.

      “That’s a depressing philosophy, Mr. … Ernie.”

      “It’s the way the world turns, kiddo.”

      By that time we were in Chinatown. So far in my life, I’d visited Chinatowns in New York and San Francisco and Los Angeles. The one in San Francisco is the largest and most appealing, I guess, and it had a lot of history behind it, what with the gold rush and the railroads and everything, but this one in Los Angeles was pretty nice, too. I liked the arches and a couple of buildings that were built like Chinese pagodas. Hop Luey’s, where Ernie had taken me to dine … I mean eat lunch … after he’d interviewed me, was one of the pagoda-type buildings. We didn’t eat there today. Instead, Ernie led me to a little hole-in-the-wall place on the other side of Hill.

      He shoved the door open and stood aside for me to enter, an indication of good manners I hadn’t expected from that source. Not that I thought Ernie was a barbarian or anything; it’s only that he hadn’t thus far in my experience of him demonstrated any particular attachment to the rules of polite society. Enticing aromas met my nostrils as soon as I entered the place, which was small and dark. Several men sat at a long counter. I saw no tables and chairs, and wasn’t sure what to do.

      Ernie knew. He strode up to the counter, and gestured for me to sit on a high stool. It was a fairly daunting prospect, since I’m not especially tall, but I managed, denting my dignity only slightly. I looked around with interest. I’d never been in a place like this. Ernie and I were the only white people there, and I was the only woman. I’d have felt uncomfortable were it not for my companion. To a man, the Chinese gentlemen sitting at the counter were holding bowls and scooping food into their mouths with chopsticks. I wasn’t accustomed to seeing people eat in exactly that way, but I allowed for cultural differences so as not to seem priggish.

      “Howdy, Charlie,” Ernie said to the man behind the counter.

      “ ’Lo, Ernie. Whatcha gonna have today?”

      “The usual.”

      “And for the lady?” The man named Charlie lifted his eyebrows at me.

      “She’ll have the same.” Ernie grinned at me.

      I wasn’t sure what to do, but I smiled at Charlie, then leaned closer to Ernie and whispered, “What’s the usual?”

      “Pork and noodles.”

      Pork and noodles? Well, I’d been eager for adventure. I guess this counted.

      It turned out to be more of an adventure than I’d counted on. When Charlie set out bowls in front of us, he set a pair of chopsticks on the counter beside the bowl. I looked at the chopsticks in dismay.

      “You can do it, kiddo,” said Ernie. I heard the laughter in his voice.

      “I’ve never used chopsticks before,” I whispered.

      “They’re easy. Just hold ’em like this.” He demonstrated.

      I picked up my chopsticks and, after a little initial fumbling, managed to hold them in the prescribed manner.

      “Practice on your napkin, kid,” Ernie suggested.

      So I did, and one of the chopsticks slipped and fell onto the counter with a clack. How embarrassing. But Ernie picked it up and handed it to me, and I tried again. “Um … now what do I do?” The bowl seemed awfully far away from my mouth. I was sure to slop food all over myself unless I leaned over so far my nose would be in my bowl.

      “You can do it. Just pick up your bowl like this.” He demonstrated, lifting his bowl in the exact same way as all the other men in the restaurant. Then he dipped his chopsticks into the bowl and shoveled some pork and noodles into his mouth.

      “Um …” I almost made the mistake of telling him I considered what he was doing incredibly unmannerly. Then I recalled yet again that this wasn’t Boston. My mother was thousands of miles away, on Cape Cod, and she’d never, ever know how I spent this particular day’s luncheon time. So I picked up my bowl with some reluctance and hoped I wouldn’t dribble on myself, the counter, Ernie, or the floor.

      I sniffed the steam rising from my bowl with some degree of nervousness. One sniff was enough to calm my nerves, at least about the savoriness of the meal, thank God. It smelled wonderful, and I saw that, along with the pork and noodles, there were plenty of vegetables, so not even my mother could object to this particular luncheon, except for the manner in which the food would be transferred from the bowl to my mouth. She’s a stickler for eating vegetables, my mother.

      So we ate our luncheon, and then Ernie ordered some more tea. Charlie brought some wonderful almond cookies to go with the tea, and we lingered over dessert. We lingered quite a while, actually, and I was unsure why we were taking so long over our meal. Then the delay became clear to me. As soon as most of the other diners had left the restaurant, Ernie gestured for Charlie to come to us.

      “You want something else?”

      “No, thanks, but I have a question for you.”

      “Question?” Charlie frowned a little. “I don’t know nothing, Ernie. You know that.”

      “Don’t worry, Charlie. This question won’t come back to bite you.”

      Whatever that meant.

      “Well … what your question? I might not answer it.”

      “It’s not hard. Have you ever seen this lady around Chinatown?”  Ernie pulled the photograph of Babs Houser out of his pocket and laid it on the counter.

      Charlie squinted at the photograph for several moments. “I dunno,” he said at last. “All you white people look alike to me.”

      I was shocked, but Ernie laughed. “Yeah, I know, Charlie, but I’m trying to find this woman. You ever see her? She might have hung out in one of those shops across the street.”

      Charlie glanced up from the photograph. “Why you want to know?”

      “Nothing dangerous to you or anybody else in Chinatown. Her family is looking for her, and they came to me to find her.”

      “Yeah?” Charlie perused the picture again.

      “Yeah.”

      I saw from his expression that Charlie had remembered something. “Wait a minute. Yeah, maybe I seen her once or twice.” He transferred his squint from the photograph to Ernie. “What you going to do if you find her?”

      “Don’t worry, Charlie. I’m not a cop any longer. I don’t want to mess up your Mah-Jongg racket or anything. I’m just going to take her home again.”

      Charlie grinned slightly and nodded. “She do something wrong?”

      “You bet,” said Ernie without giving the matter a thought. “She does wrong stuff all the time. She’s a real loser, but I still gotta find her. Her daughter needs her.”

      “She got a daughter?” Charlie’s expression was far from inscrutable, as I’d heard Chinese faces were. At the moment his countenance registered overt disapproval.

      “Yup. And don’t ask me why, but the kid wants her back.”

      Shaking his head, Charlie said, “You might want ask Han Li. I think I see her in his place.”

      “Han Li? The guy who runs the numbers?”

      “You don’t care about that.” It was a question, although Charlie’s inflection didn’t designate it as such.

      “I don’t give a rap about Han Li and his numbers-running racket. I only want to find Babs Houser.”

      “Yeah? Well, maybe you talk to Han Li.”

      “Thanks, Charlie. I appreciate it.”

      To prove it, he laid a ten-dollar bill on the counter. It disappeared so fast, you’d have thought Charlie was a conjuror. “You bet.”

      Ernie again pocketed the photograph of Babs and helped me down from my stool. My head was buzzing with questions when we left the small restaurant. “What’s numbers running? What’s a racket?” I didn’t get to ask any of the other questions, because Ernie shushed me.

      “I’ll tell you when we get back to the office. Just shut up and listen for now.”

      Well! However, in spite of the rude way the request had been phrased, I decided to honor it, since I was such a neophyte at the investigation business. We walked across the plaza from Charlie’s noodle shop, and Ernie pushed a door open and gestured for me to enter. So I did, my heart beginning to speed up with the knowledge that I was on an honest-to-goodness investigation of an honest-to-goodness missing-person case.

      The place was crowded with trinkets and Chinese bowls and plates and statues and it had an interesting, sweet smell, sort of a combination of sandalwood and roses. I liked it. It smelled very … well … Oriental, I guess. My gaze was captured by some gowns of silk brocade hanging against a wall, and I wanted to inspect them. Ernie, however, was on a mission. He walked straight to the dusty counter, behind which sat a Chinese man on a tall stool, who’d been smoking and doing nothing else that I could determine.

      “Han Li?” said Ernie.

      The man bobbed his head.

      “I’m Ernie Templeton, and I understand you might know this woman.” He slapped the photograph of Babs on the counter.

      Han Li gave a start of alarm and hopped off his stool. “Ay! What you mean?”

      “Just what I said. I’m trying to find Babs Houser, and
you
know where she is. So, tell me.”

      I thought he was being a trifle precipitate. After all, we didn’t really
know
that Mr. Li—or perhaps he was Mr. Han …  I forget how Chinese names work—had any knowledge of Babs’s whereabouts. But, as I kept reminding myself, Ernie knew what he was doing, and I didn’t. And I have to admit that his direct approach was having a definite effect. Whether it was the right one or not, I guess we’d find out.

      “No! She bad! I not know her. She bad!”

      Mr. Li had started babbling in an incoherent mixture of Chinese and English. He hurried out from behind his counter and made flapping gestures at us. “You go now! I gotta close for lunch. You go!”

      “Wait a minute. Where’s Babs Houser?”

      Another spate of Chinese and English followed Ernie’s question. The only words I could clearly distinguish were “Don’t know” and “No” and “Bad.” They didn’t give me a whole lot of hope for a successful conclusion of our afternoon’s adventure.

      “I’m coming back with the coppers, Li,” Ernie warned. “If you know where Babs is, you’d better tell quick, or you’re going to be in a whole lot of trouble.”

      That statement shocked me, since Ernie had promised Charlie that no one would come to harm if he cooperated and told us what he knew about Babs. I was slightly disappointed in Ernie.

      Nevertheless, we left the trinket shop. As soon as the door slammed behind us, I heard the key turn in the lock. Ernie put his finger to his lips and drew me aside. Mr. Li was pulling the shades down over the windows when we slipped down a very narrow alley beside the shop.

      “Follow me,” Ernie commanded in a whisper.

      “Why did you threaten him? You promised—”

      “Shut up!” Ernie warned. “Scold me later. I’ve got investigation to do now.”

      So, fuming inside, I shut up, although I also began to think that perhaps I wasn’t cut out for the private investigation business. Honesty had always seemed to me to be an important virtue, and I didn’t like to see people I admired—sort of—being dishonest, even if it was in pursuit of a job.

      Or a missing woman.

      All right, so perhaps I was being a little bit prissy. I’d have to think about it all later, because Ernie grabbed me by the hand and dragged me behind him down the alleyway.

      All three of the Chinatowns I’ve visited have had the same distinct aroma about them. I suppose the same thing could be said for fishing docks and lumber mills and libraries. This Chinatown smell was comprised of rotting vegetable matter and some kind of incense. At least, I guessed it was incense. It wasn’t an unpleasant odor, only distinctive. And strong, at least in that alley.

      Ernie moved like a cat. I was most impressed with his silence. I tried to emulate him, although I had fairly sturdy shoes on and they clopped a bit. I attempted to tiptoe. He kept hold of my hand as we exited the alley onto an open, paved space behind some stores. The odor of strange, past-their-prime vegetables became stronger, and it wasn’t mitigated by the mingling of incense. I figured out why when Ernie led me past a line of garbage cans. I also realized I ought to have expected detective work to entail some back-alley work.

      Mr. Li was almost running. I could see him through the throng, making a beeline for a street north of Chinatown, called Yale. Ernie made sure there were always several people between Mr. Li and us, but he never lost sight of him. Once, when Mr. Li glanced over his shoulder, Ernie shoved me into a doorway and turned so as to appear to be looking in a window. I didn’t offer a complaint, even though he’d shoved me pretty hard. One must become accustomed to the vagaries of one’s employment, I suppose.

      Foot traffic thinned slightly when we turned right on Yale. Ernie hung back a little. When Mr. Li darted into a building which, I presumed contained flats, Ernie sped up some.

      “What are we doing?” I whispered, my heart racing with excitement.

      “What are you whispering for?”

      I frowned at Ernie. “I thought you told me to be quiet.”

      “Yeah, but that was when Li might hear us. He just went inside this building. Didn’t you see him?”

      There was still much I needed to learn about the detective business. Slightly disgruntled, I said more loudly, “What are we doing?”

      “Following Li. I think this is where he lives. Let’s see.” And he pushed open the door and entered the building, bold as brass.

      Sure enough, it looked like a rooming house. Or an apartment building. Or something along those lines. The area into which the door led was more of a hallway than a room. Long and narrow, it was lit but dimly. The carpet was shabby, the paint on the walls was peeling, an odor of dust and must prevailed, and I’d have been happier if I weren’t there. A bank of mailboxes had been built into one wall, most with handmade cards tacked over the boxes designating which apartment number belonged to which box. There were some names written on the cards, too, but more often than not they were in the form of Chinese characters. I guess the Los Angeles postal service employed some Chinese mailmen, since nobody else would be able to read them.