“Of course,” Elizabeth said. Assuming the iPod’s battery was up for it.
She turned to Jesse then, thinking about the other tech devices in his bag—in particular, the radio that was their only real connection to Kemp’s base at the Long Wharf in Oakland. Because another hour had passed, and they were no closer to finding Mercy Kemp. She would have to check in soon—what was she supposed to say? But the expression on Jesse’s face stopped her.
Not that he was showing much obvious emotion. His stoneface emoji was fully engaged. But Elizabeth knew him well enough to read the clenched jaw, the rapid blinks. There was a lot going on inside him. Happiness at seeing his sister, she guessed. Pleasure at the way Phoebe responded to the music. But darker things, too. Echoes of his own trauma. Maybe guilt. Phoebe would spend a lifetime learning to deal with what had happened to her at the hands of Roscoe Candy, but Jesse would spend a lifetime dealing with the knowledge that he had failed to protect her from it.
So no need to mention August Kemp or the fucking radio. At least not right now.
Not until Sonny Lau showed up, which happened a couple of hours later.
14
Phoebe had changed in ways Jesse found both pleasing and dismaying.
Her disfigurement was no surprise. Her missing eye was a tragedy, and her other wounds had healed badly, but those marks and scars weren’t what troubled him. Something nervous and wary had taken up residence inside her. She talked too eagerly, or not at all. She laughed as if laughter hurt her throat. Jesse supposed it was a symptom of the disease Elizabeth called PTSD. Jesse himself had caught it from his last encounter with Roscoe Candy, and it was natural that Phoebe, who was more sensitive, had come down with a more serious case. There was no easy cure, according to Elizabeth.
Jesse felt his own old rage churning inside him, faded memories suddenly burnished to a high shine. He nearly jumped out of his chair when Soo Yee came through the front door with Sonny Lau behind her. It was as if his years at City had never happened, as if he was still the whorehouse boy who ran with the boo how doy. Aunt Abbie stood up and said, “Come with me, Phoebe, we’ll make ourselves useful in the kitchen. Elizabeth, would you like to join us?”
“No,” Jesse said before Elizabeth could answer. “She stays.”
His aunt and sister left the parlor by one door as Sonny entered by another. Jesse gave his old friend an evaluating look and got one in return. Sonny had become a man, thicker and more muscular than Jesse would have anticipated. And while he had always been a careful dresser, Sonny’s taste in clothes appeared to have sharpened: He wore a knee-length frock coat, a poppy-red vest, and a silk four-in-hand tie. His braided queue dangled as far as his waist. If he was carrying knives or pistols, they were well concealed. Sonny put out his hand, and Jesse shook it.
Sonny spared a glance for Elizabeth. “Who’s the woman?”
“She works for the City of Futurity,” Jesse said, “just like me.”
“I heard as much.” Sonny’s English was deliberately, almost aggressively formal. “Is she from the future?”
“She is.”
“I would have thought she’d be wearing trousers or smoking a cigar.”
“Pass on the cigar,” Elizabeth said. “But yeah, I wish I’d packed a pair of jeans.”
“Can we speak in her presence?”
“Yes.”
“Freely?”
“Yes.”
“Without being interrupted?”
“Well, I hope so,” Jesse said.
“Good. I expect you called me here to talk about Roscoe Candy?”
“That,” Jesse said. “But not just that.”
“What else?”
By way of an answer Jesse reached into his calico travel bag and took out a Glock 19 and set it down on one of Aunt Abbie’s gleaming sideboards. “Have you ever seen a pistol like this one?”
Sonny Lau stared at it. “What an interesting question.”
Sonny didn’t know how Roscoe Candy had survived his gunshot wound. It must have been a near thing, he said, because after the burning of Madame Chao’s whorehouse Candy had disappeared for almost three years. And when he did eventually turn up, consolidating his old San Francisco properties and occasionally strutting down Market Street with a cohort of Sacramento thugs in striped jerseys, he was gaunter and grayer than he had been before. Tong men who had dealt with him said Candy still suffered chronic pain from his wound and was obliged to wear a truss he had ordered all the way from Chicago. None of this had improved his temperament, though it had changed him subtly. Candy had once seemed to delight in his own wickedness, but the new Roscoe Candy was differently vicious: He hurt people more methodically and with less emotion. He still cut his victims, Sonny said, but now he cut them as professionally and as indifferently as a butcher cuts a beeve.
None of which meant Candy had forgotten about Jesse Cullum. As soon as Candy was back in San Francisco he had offered a generous reward to anyone who spotted Jesse or could provide news of his whereabouts. “He expected you to come back sooner or later,” Sonny said, “as a dog returns to its vomit. Have you been seen?”
“I only just arrived.”
“Candy has eyes all over town. That’s something you’ll have to reckon with, if you stay. Especially if you stay here.”
“I won’t be staying here.”
Sonny cocked his head. “You didn’t come back just because of Roscoe Candy, did you?”
“No.”
“He’s only a complication.”
“I hope that’s all he is.”
“Soo Yee could have told you most of what I just told you. I thought you called me here because you wanted help going up against Candy. But that’s not it. So what do you want from me?”
Jesse didn’t answer, only glanced at the pistol on the sideboard as if it were an explanation. Sonny said, “Ah, that. May I hold it?”
“Go ahead.”
Sonny picked up the Glock, keeping his fingers away from the trigger guard. He weighed it in his hands, puzzled over the clip, admired the metalwork. “It’s a well-made thing. As pretty as it is dangerous. A City thing.”
“Seen one before?”
“Not with my own eyes.”
“Heard of one?”
Sonny nodded slowly. “I’m not supposed to say. But yes. Little Tom has one. The heads of the other Six Companies also claim to have one.”
Jesse exchanged a look with Elizabeth, whose expression was a gratifying combination of genuine surprise and oh-I-get-it-now. “They acquired these pistols recently?”
“I don’t know, but I first heard of them a month ago.”
“How did they come to possess them?”
“About that, no one speaks. Why? Do you want me to find out?”
“I’m looking for the man who brought these guns into the city.”
“Again, why? What’s your business with him?”
“He doesn’t belong here, Sonny. He needs to go back where he came from.”
“Are you a bounty hunter now?”
“Bounty hunter for the City, you could say.”
“The City of Futurity is drying up faster than spit in a desert. You must be in a hurry to find this man.”
“We are. And I don’t like to impose on our friendship by asking for more than you’re willing to give, but—”
Sonny Lau said, “You’re not my friend.”
Jesse was startled. “Say that again?”
“Honestly, what’s Jesse Cullum to me? I have lots of friends. Most of them know better than to ask difficult favors of me. But you’re not my friend. You may be older now, but you’re still just a shirttail whorehouse bouncer with shoulders like a buffalo’s and cast-iron balls. A worthless piece of Tenderloin shit with more pride than sense. You want me to risk my reputation and my career by poking my nose into the business of people who could have me killed just for looking at them the wrong way? I wouldn’t do that for a friend. No true friend would ask. Only an impertinent bastard like Jesse Cullum would ask.” He grinned. “And Jesse Cullum’s one of the few people I would do it for.”