Yellowthread Street (4 page)

Alice made a grunting noise and took a cigarette from a pocket in her coat. It looked minute in her mouth, like an elephant using a toothpick, and when she inhaled the smoke did not come out again. It went inside that massive block of lard and was too scared to come back near the teeth in case they snapped at it.

‘First,’ Alice said, ‘I decided we cut his balls off and let him bleed to death.’ She shook her head, ‘Second, I’ve got a Jap boy who says he can disembowel.’

The assistant tried to form a sympathetic smile.

‘Third, I spoke to some friends,’ Alice said. The assistant thought of the dark telephone lines terminating in a black room somewhere on Hanford Hill and his stomach contracted. ‘Fourth, a decision has been made.’

The assistant forced a cheerful nod. He held his teeth tight together because they kept making a noise that sounded like he was cold. One of the hospital nuns came down the corridor and the assistant wanted to grasp her around her black cloth-covered knees and beg for refuge and a safe passage out to Cuba. ‘Yes,’ Alice said.

The nun halted in front of Alice. Alice stood up and towered over the minute creature.

I’m Sister Sung,’ the nun who was a trained nurse said. ‘Praise be to God your friend is all right.’

‘Praise be to God,’ Alice who was an atheist said. She looked at the assistant.

The assistant, who was a Buddhist, said, ‘Praise be to God and our Lord Jesus Christ.’

‘It was a terrible accident,’ Sister Sung said. She motioned to the bench where Alice and the assistant had been sitting, ‘Do sit down.’

‘Thank you, Sister,’ Alice said. She sat down.

The assistant remained standing. He was very respectful towards ladies.

‘It was an accident?’ the nun asked sweetly.

The assistant nodded.

‘It was part of a crime against an honest business,’ Alice said. ‘I don’t know how ordinary people can expect to go about their work in these times.’

‘You’ll call the police then?’ the nun asked.

The assistant shook his head.

‘As soon as I know my friend is out of danger,’ Alice said, ‘and I’d like to make a small donation to the St Paul de Chartres Hospital before I leave for their wonderful attention to him.’

‘Your friend is out of danger,’ Sister Sung said. ‘We have no objection to a donation to help with our work.’ She glanced at the assistant and then at Alice, ‘You’ll call the police now?’

‘Yes, Sister,’ Alice said. The assistant nodded enthusiastically.

Sister Sung considered Alice’s veracity. ‘You’ll call them?’ She prompted again, ‘You know, Miss Ping—the cops?’

‘We decided,’ Alice said, ‘we’re going to call the police. I am, personally.’ She nodded reassuringly at the diminutive religious person. ‘Honest.’

Which, at exactly seven minutes past nine, Spencer, who answered the phone, found to his utter amazement to be true.

O’Yee and the manager were ensconced together inside the glass cashier’s booth like two dressed Japanese dolls in a plastic container. O’Yee kept trying to concentrate on what the manager was saying—he was talking about ticket sales and the last thing O’Yee wanted if he didn’t catch the African was a subsidiary charge of misappropriation—but the manager’s attention kept straying to the Colt Airweight he still held in his silk handkerchief.

‘There are front stalls and back stalls,’ the manager said, ‘don’t mix them up and don’t feel sorry for people who tell you they’ve got bad eyes and can’t afford the better seats.’

O’Yee nodded. The manager kept running his hand along the outline of the gun under the handkerchief and patting the part where the cartridges were.

‘What size is it?’ the manager asked.

‘What?’

‘This.’ He held up the gun.

‘I’ll have it back now if you don’t mind,’ O’Yee said. Being in the same glass box as a man in full cry with his fantasies made him feel uncomfortable.

‘How many bullets?’ the manager asked. He didn’t give the gun back.

‘Six,’ O’Yee said. ‘Can I please have my gun back?’

‘Hmm,’ the manager said. He had a quick, unutterably pleasurable vision of the thief of his life’s work dying in convulsions outside his cinema like John Dillinger with a watering-can pattern of holes in him.

‘Can I have my gun back, please?’ O’Yee asked pleasantly. He did not want to upset someone who spent the greater part of his life wearing a bowtie in a dark cinema watching an unending procession of death and mayhem flickering on the screen.

‘Don’t get the tickets mixed up,’ the manager said. He gave
the gun back reluctantly, still wrapped in the handkerchief. He gazed at it in warm anticipation.

O’Yee squeezed around until he was turned the other way and took the handkerchief off. He stuck the gun in the waist-band of his trousers.

‘I don’t want the customers to see it,’ the manager said totally untypically. It was a solo fantasy.

O’Yee put the gun on the shelf under the ticket counter and put an old fan magazine over it. He gave the handkerchief back to the manager.

‘Will you be able to get at it?’ the manager asked.

‘I’m not a hired killer.’

‘He’s got a gun.’

‘Then just let me get on with it, will you?’

The manager looked at him, summed him up. ‘You won’t want wages?’

‘No.’

‘I can let the cashier go? I was going to—I can let him go then?’ He seemed very pleased he had hired the Capone gang to protect his establishment and simultaneously made an economy in staff. He thought his principals would be very satisfied.

‘You can do what you like,’ O’Yee said. ‘That’s your affair.’

The manager nodded. He adjusted his bowtie. He squeezed out of the glass cubicle. ‘The cash box is just there. It’s got change in it.’

‘Thanks,’ O’Yee said.

‘One hundred dollars in ones, sixty dollars in tens and sixty-one dollars fifty in coins. Look at the change before you hand it to a customer.’ He shut the glass door and surveyed his puppet. He mouthed, ‘Ha!’ enthusiastically against the soundproof glass. He glanced at the barrel of the gun protruding from under a picture of Gregory Peck on the front page of the fan magazine and thought that was who he had hired.

‘It’s all done with trick photography in the movies,’ O’Yee said helplessly through the glass.

The manager’s mouth said, ‘What?’ He opened the glass door with a sigh. ‘What?’

‘Nothing,’ O’Yee said. The manager closed the door again.

‘Fast draw,’ O’Yee said to himself. He felt like a dinosaur in a glass display case. He remembered it wasn’t the police who had shot John Dillinger outside a cinema in America. It had been the FBI. His parents, who still lived in San Francisco, had been clear about that: it was the FBI.

He thought, ‘This is a hell of a life for a Chinese Irishman,’ and opened up for business.

Mrs Skilbeck came back into the Police Station. She had half-filled her raffia bag with purchases. Auden said, ‘Yes?’ and asked if she wanted Minnie again. She said no, she didn’t want Minnie again. She told him she had lost her husband. Her name was Mrs Skilbeck and did they have a report on him? ‘Gilpeck?’ Auden asked. He saw that name on the top form in the Pending tray. ‘No,’ Mrs Skilbeck said, ‘Skilbeck.’ ‘He’ll turn up,’ Auden said hopefully, ‘after all he’s a big boy, isn’t he?’ and Mrs Skilbeck grunted.

He took her particulars and told her to come back in an hour to see if anything had happened.

Mrs Skilbeck said, ‘
Cops!
’ and Auden wondered after she left what he had said wrong.

Chen and Wang’s food stall, when Feiffer finally located it behind the rice stall, was closed. He went back to the rice stall and motioned to the owner.

‘Only wholesale,’ the owner said wearily in English. He had no intention of selling bowls of rice to European tourists and ending up in someone’s photograph album or flickering away in colour through a Japanese projector on their parlour wall.

‘I’m not buying,’ Feiffer said in Chinese.

‘Only wholesale,’ the owner said.

Feiffer showed him his warrant card.

‘Hmm,’ the owner said, ‘I haven’t done anything.’

‘I’m not interested in you.’

The owner nodded, unconvinced.

‘The food stall behind you—’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Anything?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘Chen and Wang,’ Feiffer said.

‘Don’t know,’ the owner said.

‘When does it open?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘You’re not in any trouble.’

‘Good.’ He contemplated Feiffer.

Feiffer contemplated the owner. He was a thin man surrounded by fat bags of rice. He had rice in his hair, in the front pocket of his apron, under his fingernails, on his face, and no doubt in his shoes. He looked very ricey.

‘There’s been a murder,’ Feiffer said.

Rice came in pounds, kilos and hundredweights, maybe murders came in ones and twos. ‘Not my business,’ the owner said.

‘What time do they usually open?’

‘You open when there are customers,’ the rice owner said. That was not giving anything away except the basic tenet of good business practice. ‘No customers, no open.’

‘If the stall isn’t open the customers don’t wait,’ Feiffer said.

‘If there is no demand a businessman loses profit by opening,’ the rice owner countered.

‘A good businessman anticipates demand,’ Feiffer observed.

‘Demand is a changeable thing.’

‘A good businessman has no armour against unpredictability and change?’ Feiffer asked. ‘He is at the mercy of demand?’

‘A good businessman anticipates demand,’ the rice owner said.

‘That’s what I said.’

‘True,’ the rice owner said. He said, ‘A good businessman does anticipate demand.’

‘Well?’

The rice owner looked at him.

‘When do they open?’

‘Don’t know,’ the rice owner said.

‘There have been two murders and we think someone at the stall may be able to assist with our enquiries.’

‘Hmm,’ the rice owner said.

Feiffer tried his man-in-the-society-of-his-fellows shot. ‘A good businessman does his civic duty.’

‘Hmm,’ the rice owner said. He was not thinking about it.

‘I don’t want to make trouble for you,’ Feiffer said.

‘Of course not.’

‘A good businessman keeps good records.’

The rice owner glanced past Feiffer. There were no customers at the moment. He leaned forward on his tabletop to continue the discussion. The man was quite bright for a European, he thought. ‘A good businessman is obliged by the State to keep good records.’

‘A good businessman would keep good records even if the State decayed away,’ Feiffer said. He thought it was worthy of Confucius. ‘A good businessman takes a pride in his work.’

‘Yes,’ the rice owner said. That was a good point.

‘He would know who he has supplied the products of his business to without looking up the records the State obliges him to keep just because he is a good businessman.’

‘True,’ the rice owner said.

‘You are the only rice supplier in this immediate area. So it is you who would have supplied rice to the food stall that is now closed because the owners are bad businessmen and do not anticipate demand.’ He thought, this is driving me crazy.

‘No,’ the rice owner said.

‘Your competitors supply it because you are a lousy businessman?’ Feiffer asked.

‘I supply it!’

‘So you are a good businessman.’

‘I am!’

‘Ah,’ Feiffer said. It was time for the crunch. He had trodden the paths of logic and inner purity carefully and now it was time for the reward. ‘At what time do you supply the night’s rice to the food stall of Chen and Wang?’

A slow smile creased the rice owner’s face. It displaced several grains of rice from the corners of his mouth and turned him from a mere rice owner to a sage among the illiterate and unread masses.

‘A good businessman keeps his transactions confidential.’

Feiffer closed his eyes. He felt his philosophical mantle drop from his shoulders. ‘When do they buy their fucking rice?’

‘Oh,’ the rice owner said. He had been enjoying the meeting of like minds.

‘Well?’

The rice owner looked at his ex-adversary and saw only a mere European.

‘Don’t know,’ the rice owner said.

Feiffer drew a deep breath. He looked away from the rice owner’s face to avoid doing it violence and saw that the food stall of Chen and Wang had been open for some time. Customers sat on stools around it munching their suppers in epicurean peace and clicking their chopsticks.

‘A good businessman—’ the rice owner began in a kindly tone.

‘Go to hell!’ Feiffer said.

The rice owner looked disappointed and rejected. He fixed Feiffer with a sad smile, thought that such was life, and went back to his rice bags.

‘I’ve lost my wife,’ Mr Skilbeck said.

‘Oh,’ Apricot Tang Lee said, ‘poor boy.’

‘Lost her.’

Apricot Tang Lee poured him another drink from the bottle on the table.

‘Yeah,’ Mr Skilbeck said. ‘She’s gone.’

‘She dead?’ Apricot Tang Lee asked. She poured Mr Skilbeck another drink.

‘Gone,’ Mr Skilbeck said. ‘I don’t care.’ He looked at Apricot Tang Lee’s breasts, ‘What’s your name?’

‘Apricot.’

‘That’s nice,’ Mr Skilbeck said. He leaned back in his chair and downed the drink.
Alice’s
was almost three quarters full, what he could see of it in the gloom of the dimmed lights. The tables were up on little platforms around the walls with bamboo curtains dividing them off from the ones in the centre of the floor. ‘You’re nice,’ he said again. ‘I’ve always liked Chinese girls.’

Apricot laid her hand on Mr Skilbeck’s crotch. ‘Chinese girls know how to treat a man,’ Mr Skilbeck said.

‘Hong Kong girl like American man,’ Apricot said. She ran her other hand across Mr Skilbeck’s shoulders and then over his bald head, ‘Hong Kong girl Apricot like smooth head.’ She stroked his cheek, ‘Whiskers.’ She giggled.

‘Stupid bitch,’ Mr Skilbeck said. He looked at Apricot Tang Lee’s breasts under her imitation silk cheong sam top that ended in a mini skirt, ‘My wife—stupid bitch.’

‘I got long leg,’ Apricot Tang Lee said. She pulled the hem of her skirt back under the table and twisted her toes from left to right, ‘See?’