Dragonfire

Sixteen

The China Doll showed up at twenty minutes past nine.

I was working on my second beer, fighting off impatience, when I saw her come in. Even in the dim pinkish light, I recognized her immediately: tiny, young-looking, wearing a Chinese dress slit to the thigh, the long pigtails Kam Fong had mentioned pulled forward so that they hung over her breasts. The place was crowded now, and she came forward in slow, dainty movements, looking at the faces of the men she passed, like a predator sizing up her prey.

I was out of the booth and moving toward her before she got to the end of the bar. One of the men turned on his stool and said something to her; she stopped to answer him. But when I reached her, coming up close, she turned her head and tilted it back to peer up at me.

She was no more than five feet tall; the top of her head was on a level with my chest. Too much makeup and powder gave her face a whitish cast, and her mouth looked painted on. China Doll, all right. Life-sized doll, soft and cuddly, that would do things the toy manufacturers never dreamed of.

I said, “Ming Toy?”

“Yes?” Sibilant piping voice, as if it were coming out of a box implanted in her throat.

“I’ve got a twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. It’s yours if you sit down and have a drink with me.”

Her gaze slid down my body like a caress, flicked up again to my face; the eyes, under long artificial lashes, were old and wise and black as midnight. The point of her tongue came out and made her painted lips glisten.

The guy at the bar nudged me with one hand. I looked at him, and he said, “Hey, buddy, I saw her first.” I kept on looking at him, not saying anything, until he started to fidget. Then I said, “Drink your drink — buddy,” and he mumbled something and swiveled away from me with his shoulders hunched.

When I looked at Ming Toy again her tongue was still showing between her teeth, like a cat’s. “Twenty dollars,” I said. “For a drink and some conversation. That’s all.”

“I would be honored.”

Yeah, I thought. I took her arm and steered her back to the booth, and we sat down. She folded her hands on the table, watching me as I got the twenty out of my wallet. But I didn’t give it to her, not yet; I folded it in half and put it under my beer glass. “Talk first,” I said. “All right?”

“Yes.”

The waitress came over, took the China Doll’s order for a daiquiri, and went away again. The damned jukebox began to give out with another loud song, all hammering drums and lyrics that sounded like gibberish. I leaned closer to Ming Toy so that my face was only a few inches from hers. The tongue came out again, like an invitation this time; but her eyes were hooded and wary, watching.

I told her my name, my right name. The artificial lashes fluttered once, but that was all; nothing changed in her expression. “You know who I am?” I asked her.

“No,” she said. “We have met before?”

“We haven’t met. But we both know some people.”

“Yes?”

“Yes. A cop named Eberhardt, for one.”

Still no change in her expression. But after a few seconds she nodded and said, “So,” in a different voice, without the whisper of sex in it.

“You know me now?” I said.

“Yes. I think so.”

“Good. What do you know?”

“You the man who was shot. You and the policeman.”

“What else?”

“Nothing else.”

“Then I’ll tell you,” I said. “The man who shot Eberhardt and me is a Chinese named Jimmy Quon. You know who he is, don’t you?”

Her hands moved together on the table; she was nervous now, and there was fear peeking out at the edges of the whore’s mask. “Everyone know Mau Yee,” she said. “But why you come to me? I have nothing to do with him.”

“It’s not Mau Yee I’m interested in right now. It’s the man who hired him, a white man named Carl Emerson.”

She looked away from me, biting her lip. The waitress came back just then, and when she set the daiquiri down Ming Toy caught it up immediately and took an unladylike bite out of it. I got rid of the waitress with some money and bent toward the China Doll again.

I said, “You’ve had dealings with Emerson before,” making it a statement instead of a question.

“I... yes.”

“One of your customers?”

“Yes.”

“One of Polly Soon’s customers?”

“I don’t... why you ask about Polly Soon?”

“You were a friend of hers, weren’t you?”

A convulsive nod. And another bite out of the daiquiri, this time with both hands wrapped around the glass.

“How did she die, Ming Toy?”

“She fell... It was an accident...”

“Was it? How do you know? Were you there when it happened?”

“No,” she said, a little too quickly.

“You live on the same floor at the Ping Yuen project. You sure you weren’t there that night? You sure you didn’t see Polly Soon fall?”

“No!”

“Did Carl Emerson push her off that walkway?”

“I don’t know...”

“But he was with her that night?”

“I didn’t see them. I wasn’t there.”

“Is that what you told Lieutenant Eberhardt?”

“Yes, I...” She blinked. “You know he spoke to me?”

“I do now. What else did you tell him?”

“Nothing. I know nothing about Polly’s death.”

“You must have told him something, given him some kind of lead. Did you mention Emerson’s name?”

“No.”

“Did he mention it?”

“No.”

“Another name, then? Somebody else that he went to see?”

She hesitated. Then she said, “Anna Chu.”

“Who’s Anna Chu?”

“Old woman who lives in the project. She minds the business of others.”

“You think maybe she saw something that night?”

“Maybe yes.”

“Do you know if the lieutenant talked to her?”

“No. Anna Chu and I don’t speak; she don’t like me.”

“What’s her apartment number?”

“Five-eleven. But she won’t be there now.”

“Why not?”

“She... stay late on Tuesday nights. At the temple.”

“What temple?”

“The temple of Tien Hou. She’s one of the caretakers.”

I had heard of the Tien Hou Temple; it was one of Chinatown’s fixtures, and there had been a feature article on it in the Sunday papers some time back. Tien Hou was a Chinese goddess, queen of heaven and the sea, protector of sailors, traveling actors, and prostitutes. Yeah, I thought, prostitutes. Tien Hou must have been looking the other way the night Polly Soon died.

I said, “It’s on Waverly Place, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“And Anna Chu will be there now?”

“Until midnight. Every Tuesday.”

I took the twenty out from under my glass, held it up in front of her. She made a grab for it. I let her get her fingers on the bill, but I hung onto it. “Is there anything else you told the lieutenant? Any other name you gave him?”

“No.”

“You’d better be sure,” I said. “If I find out different, I’ll be back for another talk. You understand?”

“I have told you everything.”

I let go of the twenty. She stuffed it inside the bead purse she was carrying, slid out of the booth in hurried movements; she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I got out right after her, saw her move toward the rear of the room, saw a guy at one of the tables paw at her as she passed and Ming Toy swat his hand away. Then she was gone and so was I, on my way to find Anna Chu.

The two-block length of Waverly Place was shrouded in fog so dense you could not see more than fifty yards in either direction. What few pedestrians there were appeared and disappeared like wraiths; street lamps and neon signs seemed to hang suspended in midair, and the buildings — joss houses, darkened shops, restaurants, the headquarters of several tongs and fraternal organizations — had an insubstantial, two-dimensional look, as if they were adrift in the swirling grayness. It was the kind of night that works on your imagination, gives you the feeling that you’re surrounded by menace.

The building that housed the Tien Hou Temple was in the block between Clay and Washington. Narrow, four-storied, with ornate balconies on the upper two floors, its pagoda cornices hidden in the mist. The lower floors were dark, but I could make out faint, diffused bars of light coming through shutters beyond the top-floor balcony. A pair of bright yellow signs with red lettering in both English and Chinese, one above the glass entrance door and one attached to it, said that the temple could be found within. The door itself was unlocked.

Inside was a staircase, not very well lighted, and nothing else. On the second-floor landing there was a heavily barred door with some sort of insignia on it that I didn’t bother to look at, and on the third floor I passed another door, this one unbarred, marked with Chinese characters. I kept climbing, panting a little with the exertion, and when the stairs made a circular turning I was looking at an iron gate that blocked off access at the top. An old-fashioned doorbell had been installed in the wall near it, and below that was a hand-lettered sign that said Tien Hou was the oldest Chinese temple in America and asked for donations to keep it operating.

I pushed the bell button, but nothing happened inside. I did not even hear it ring; the only sound to hear anywhere in the building was the rasp of my own breathing. Maybe the thing doesn’t work, I thought. I put the tips of my fingers against the gate and gave it a tentative push, the way you do, and it swung inward; the gate hadn’t been shut far enough to secure the latch. I went in through it, eased it closed behind me.

“Hello? Anna Chu?”

No answer.

I was in a partitioned alcove full of tables and boxes and folding chairs, a kind of storage area. The temple was on my left; reddish light glowed in there. I could see the closed louvered doors to the balcony, a recessed side altar made of red-painted wood with some sort of statue inside it. The pungent odor of incense was strong in the air, and stronger still when I entered the temple proper.

It was some place. The long side wall facing me was lined with altars, statues, teak tables and other pieces of furniture, nearly all of them in red and gold. A massive scrolled wood carving, covered in gold leaf, stretched the width of the room overhead; the rest of the ceiling was taken up with dozens of hanging lanterns in pink and green, red and gold. A long table draped in white cloth and stacked with paper-craft was set along the near wall. At the upper end were a pair of great carved altars, one that took up the entire back wall and another, with a red prayer bench fronting it, set apart in the middle of the floor. Both of these, and the smaller altars on the far side, were arranged with embroidered cloths, bowls of oranges and apples, potted crysanthemums, joss urns, red-hued electric candles, and other things I could not identify.

There was no sign of anybody in the room. I called Anna Chu’s name again, still didn’t get an answer, and moved ahead toward the main altars. To my left, beyond the white-draped table, was a short ell containing a bench for the storage of incense and a red-painted platform that supported an ancient drum and a heavy iron temple bell. When I got to where I could see the floor next to the platform I came to an abrupt standstill. The hackles went up on my neck; without thinking about it, I yanked the .38 out of my coat pocket and held it upraised in my hand.

Somebody was lying over there, face down, legs and arms outflung. But it wasn’t Anna Chu because it wasn’t a woman. Alongside the sprawled form was an ornamental altar standard, like a spear or a pikestaff, that had come out of a row of similar standards on the wall behind the altar; part of the bronze symbol decorating its head was clotted with blood. So was the back of the man’s skull — what was left of it. He had to have been struck down with savage force to cause that much damage.

My stomach kicked over a couple of times, pumped the taste of bile into my throat. I went over to him, around next to the temple bell. I was pretty sure I knew who he was even before I did that, but seeing his face gave me an even greater feeling of incredulity. He shouldn’t have been here and he shouldn’t have been dead, and I could not put the two facts together so that they made any kind of sense. I just kept standing there, confused, smelling the incense and fighting off nausea, staring down at the body in the dim ruby light from the lanterns and the electric candles.

The dead man was Jimmy Quon.