“I’d like to keep that to myself.”
“You police?”
“No.”
“You do not carry a gun, do you, mister?”
“I do not,” said Archer.
The man searched him expertly, from his chest to his hips, then moved aside and held the door open for him.
Archer said, “If I didn’t have the matches and the name, and I had a gun, would you have let me in?”
The man smiled without showing his teeth. “Enjoy your time here, Mr. Smith.”
Archer pulled out the photo of Lamb and showed it to him. “You ever seen her here?”
“My memory is no good. I will forget you when you step inside the door.”
Archer said, “Is that for when the police come looking and you deny having seen me?”
The man let the door go, turned back to the street, and watched the rain fall.
Archer moved through the door and his nostrils immediately ran into the aroma of heavy incense, and his ears bumped into a sea of intriguing noises coming from every direction. He entered a small foyer and looked around. There were multiple beaded doorways leading down other corridors. He had an inkling the Jade Lion would resemble a rabbit’s warren inside a maze, encased in a labyrinth, all outlined in indecipherable Chinese.
Archer had worked cases in Chinatown before. He had found that the people here didn’t relinquish their secrets easily and usually not at all. It wasn’t that they were naturally unfriendlier than anyone else; they had just been burned a few times too many by people who looked just like Archer. And when people didn’t treat you like you were human, there was no possibility of trust or engagement. But still, he was a PI working a case, so he had to try.
From another beaded doorway appeared a woman. She was in her early twenties with black hair cut close to her small, oval, and painted face. She wore a tight-fitting yellow dress with red embroidery across its front in the shape of a dragon. She had on red heels and no stockings. “Drink, mister?”
He looked around. “Yeah, is there a bar? Or did I read the sign outside wrong?”
She pointed at the beaded doorway to his left.
“That way, honey.”
“They have good drinks here?”
“That way, honey.”
Archer took out the photo and showed it to the woman. Indicating Lamb he said, “You ever seen her here before?”
“That way, honey.”
Archer put the photo away and smiled down into her petite face framed with large dark eyes topped by fake lashes so long it looked like someone had glued spiders to the lids.
He pointed to the beaded doorway. “Let me get this straight: that way, honey?”
She smiled and walked through another set of beads, swishing her full hips just so as she did. She had a tattoo on her muscular left calf. It was a long-bladed knife with drops of blood on it.
Well, that was charming, he thought, as he pushed through his own set of beads in search of the bar.
And Eleanor Lamb, alive or dead.
Chapter 23
Down a short hall was the bar. It was not like any bar of Archer’s acquaintance, certainly not like the over-the-top Cocoanut Grove. It was not even like the decrepit Boleros. While it was small, dark, and dingy with a gummy plank floor, it also held splashes of color in the form of wall sconce lampshades and puffy balls tied to the ceiling, and framed Chinese-inspired masks behind the bar. Elaborately clothed and face-painted barmaids carried drinks on round trays to thirsty customers. There were no mirrors, no rows of bottles, no jukebox, no grand piano. No tables or bar stools, either. Folks were either standing at the small wooden counter or else in the middle of the room in groups of two or three chatting quietly. A quick sweep of the area told Archer that he was the only white man in the place. The customers here were of various ages and sizes and dressed in everything from three-piece pinstriped suits to long, embroidered robes. The drink glasses they held weren’t big; in fact they were all thimble-sized.
To a person they all turned and looked at him as he invaded their little domain.
He walked up to the bar, found a slot in between a tall, lean man wearing a scarlet embroidered robe and a chubby man in a two-piece seersucker suit and a dark-colored shirt. Chubby’s face was growing jowls, and the space over his mouth was trying and failing to birth a mustache. The man smiled, revealing enough gold fillings and caps to allow Archer to retire if he could find a way to extract them. The robed man sipped his drink and did not look Archer’s way. He bent over his glass as though he were saying a prayer.
If so, Archer hoped it wasn’t for him.
The bartender, a giant dressed in a long cloth robe the color of grain, and who would have looked perfectly at home in an arena wrestling a rhino, walked slowly over, cleaning a glass with a rag. He eyed Archer but said nothing.
“Can I get three fingers of whiskey with a splash of soda, pal?” Archer said.
The man looked him up and down, then walked away to discuss something with another gentleman who was, apparently, more to his liking.
The suit next to Archer said, “They don’t serve whiskey here, fella.”
“How about gin?”
The man shook his head and showed his gold again.
“Rum? Bourbon? Vodka?”
The man just kept shaking his head. “No, nothing like that.”
“I thought this was a bar. Do they serve any alcohol or should I ask for milk?”
“Tell him you want this.” He held up his thimble glass.
“And what is that?”
“Baijiu. It’s what we all drink.”
Archer looked at the robed man, who was staring at his empty thimble glass like he was wondering where his baijiu had gone.
The suit waved to the bartender, who came back over. He didn’t look at Archer. The suit said, “He wants the usual.”
The giant walked away, picked up a bottle from below the counter, and poured some liquid into a thimble glass. He brought it back over to Archer and said something in Chinese.
Archer looked at the suit.
“He wants payment, fella. Two American dollars.”
“For that?” said Archer, staring at the tiny glass.
“It is what you Yanks like to call quality, not quantity.”
Archer passed two bucks across and the giant drifted away.
Suit raised his own glass and said, “To your health.”
“How do you drink this thing, fast or slow?”
The gold smiled at him. “We do it as a shot, as you Yanks say. But I think you might want to take it slow, fella.”
The suit drank his in one tipped-back swallow.
Archer sniffed the liquid and was surprised that it held no odor familiar to him, though the smell was very distinct. It was also clearer than any water he’d ever seen.
“It is an ancient process in China to make baijiu,” explained the suit, wiping his mouth. “Very labor intensive. Americans cannot make it. The fermentation is the tricky part. It comes in different varieties, you can tell which by smelclass="underline" light, medicinal, spicy, sesame, extra strong. We are lucky Jade gets some. That is why we come here.”
Archer took a sip and it immediately felt like he had swallowed liquid fire. As it went down his throat and landed like an inferno in his belly, the fire turned to something else and he thought he might be sick. He put one hand against the bar and closed his eyes, steeling himself to not vomit or pass out.
In about ten seconds, the twin sensations passed. He turned to the suit and croaked, “Impressive that you can slam this back, buddy.” It wasn’t just impressive, he thought, it was a damn miracle. As he looked around at the others, young and old, tossing their thimbles back and going on with their conversations as though they hadn’t just sucked down a flaming sword, the idea of Americans being the hardiest people on earth simply faded from Archer’s mind.