There was not much left now. A few bricks of justice, maybe; I still had those. Emerson was going to pay for what he’d done. So was Jimmy Quon. And so was Eberhardt, if it came to that.
I found a place to park near the Central Station precinct house on Vallejo. Over near Broadway, there was a neighborhood bar called Luigi’s; I went in there and back to a public telephone near the restrooms. It was just seven o’clock when I dialed Kam Fong’s number. I had told him to be there at seven, and he was; he answered on the second ring.
“What did you find out?” I asked him.
“Only man name Emerson known here,” he said. “Other two, no.”
“How is Emerson known? As a gambler?”
“Yes.”
“Does he frequent Lee Chuck’s parlor?”
“Sometimes.”
“Did you get that from Chuck?”
“No. Not talking to him.”
“What about the local whores?”
“Please? Not understand.”
“Emerson likes them too, doesn’t he? Chinese whores?”
“Nobody talking about that.”
“Someone talked to me about it. Did you know Polly Soon?”
Silence.
“Come on, Fong. Polly Soon — did you know her?”
“I... yes.”
“How well?”
“Not well. Nobody know whore well.”
“Did she take on Caucasian tricks?”
“Yes, maybe.”
“How did she die? You hear anything about that?”
“No.”
“Did Lieutenant Eberhardt ask you about her?”
“He asking, but I having no answer.”
“Who else did he talk to?”
“Don’t know. You think Polly Soon’s death...?”
“That’s just what I think. Did she have any close friends? Another prostitute? One of her neighbors?”
Silence.
“I’m waiting, Fong,” I said.
“Maybe... woman name Ming Toy.”
“Also a hooker?”
“Yes.”
“Where does she live? In the Ping Yuen project?”
“Yes.”
“Alone?”
“Yes.”
“Have you been to her apartment?”
“No. Not visiting whores.”
“I’ll bet,” I said. “What floor does she live on?”
“Fifth floor.”
“What apartment?”
“Near Polly Soon. Next door.”
“Did you tell the lieutenant about Ming Toy?”
“Yes.”
“When? Right after Polly Soon was killed?”
“No. Later. He asking me find out who Polly Soon’s friend.”
“How much later? A few days before the shooting, maybe?”
“I think yes.”
“Do you know if he talked to her?”
“No, not knowing.”
“All right. Does Ming Toy work the bars too?”
“Bars, yes.”
“Any one in particular?”
“Pink Dragon Bar.”
“Where’s that?”
“Broadway.”
“Near Grant?”
“Yes.”
“What does she look like? Describe her.”
“Very small. Long pigtail.”
“How old?”
“Over thirty. But she look young, like teenager. People here... they calling her China Doll.”
Yeah, I thought, China Doll. I said, “Is there anybody else who was close to Polly Soon? Any other names you gave to the lieutenant?”
“No. No one else.”
“Okay, Fong. You stick around there in case I need to talk to you again. Don’t go out anywhere tonight.”
He muttered something in Chinese. Then he said, with a kind of nervous resignation, “You call any time, I stay here.”
“Good enough.”
I cradled the receiver and went back out to the street. Dusk was just starting to spread over the city. On Broadway and along Columbus, the garish neon signs advertising the North Beach topless and bottomless joints were already ablaze, softened and given a misty sheen by the fog. There was more fog now than there had been earlier — a thickening mist wind-blown in from the sea, chill and wet and sinuous, eerie in its movements and distortions. Such heavy fog this early in the evening usually meant a London-style pea-souper later on. It was going to be some night.
I pulled the collar of my overcoat tight around my throat, walked down to the intersection of Broadway and Columbus, and crossed over into Chinatown.
The Ping Yuen housing project took up most of the block of Pacific Avenue between Grant and Stockton, a couple of blocks from the Pink Dragon Bar where the China Doll plied her trade. It was one long, tall structure, divided into wings and oddly designed so that it resembled a bastardized architectural hybrid of Chinese pagoda-style and Western motel-style. It was painted a faded pastel green, with rust-red pillars and support posts that had Chinese characters etched into them in black. Set behind an iron-spear fence, the building had a forlorn, decaying look in the fog and approaching darkness.
I pushed through the main entrance gate, under a pagoda arch bearing four statues of stylized Oriental lions. Inside, there was a narrow pebbled-concrete courtyard with some benches and a few shrubs and spindly trees. It would be somewhere in there, on that hard concrete, that Polly Soon had died. A scattering of lights on poles illuminated the area, and there were more lights glowing hazily on the upper walkways and in the windows of the blocky wings between them.
Nobody was hanging around in the courtyard, or at least nobody I could see. I crossed it to a bank of mailboxes, only a few of which bore names; none of the names was Ming Toy’s. I got into a creaking elevator festooned with spray-painted initials and let it carry me up to the fifth floor. As soon as I stepped out I was on the open walkway of the lower wing. The wind blew cold up there; that, and the fact that I was prone to vertigo in high, open places like this, forced me in close to the building wall. The outer portion of the walkway was a thin waist-high wall, with no railing on top of it. It would be easy enough for somebody to fall over it, either by accident or design.
It took me ten minutes and three brief interviews with fifth-floor residents to find out that Ming Toy occupied Apartment 515, in the middle wing. When I got to the door marked with those numerals I rapped on it with my knuckles; there wasn’t any doorbell. Silence from inside. I rapped again, louder, but that did not get me any response, either.
Nobody home.
I tried the knob. Locked. I thought about trying to slip the latch with one of my credit cards — it was that kind of lock — but I didn’t do it. If I was going to learn anything from Ming Toy, it would probably be face to face. Which made finding her my first priority. I could always come back here later on if nothing else worked out.
The Pink Dragon Bar was set back from the street under an arched portico, halfway between Grant and Stockton. The front wall and door were painted black, with a stylized pink dragon curled around the door, breathing bright red flame toward the pavement. But I was tired of looking at dragons; the hell with dragons and the hell with dragonfire. I shoved open the door and went inside.
Dark, with pinkish lights over the bar, pink lanterns on a handful of tables and six booths arranged around a rectangular dance floor. Noisy: a jukebox was playing rock music at full volume. The place was only about a third filled, with most of the customers grouped along the bar. Nearly all of them were Caucasian males. The only Chinese women in evidence were a couple of waitresses in pink miniskirts, and an overweight hooker rubbing herself against a potential John in one of the booths.