“Where?”
“The building down the block from the no-name coffee shop.”
“All right, suppose you’re right. How do you use it?”
“We use the weapon of choice in Chinatown.”
“Which is?”
“Fear. That’s what gives the tong control over the community. Maybe it’ll give us some control over the tong. First we reach the Dragon Lady. Let’s go.”
“Wait a minute, Harry. Are you going to threaten to go to the police?”
“Hardly. The police are useless. Once in a while they’ll raid a gambling den to appear to be doing something. They arrest some of the old people the den keeps around. The judge’ll fine them a hundred dollars, and it’s on with the show. I don’t know what it’s like here in Boston, but the tong usually has some of the police tied up.”
“So if they’re not afraid of the police, what?”
“The tong has a rival. The Dai Huen Jai. The Big Circle Boys. They’re a bunch of loose-knit bands of criminals from around the southern provincial capital of Canton. In Hong Kong, that area’s called the “Big Circle” because that’s what it looks like on a map.
“These babies are tough. They run about twenty to forty years old, and they’re seasoned fighters. Most of them are out of the Chinese military or are former members of the top-gun Red Guard. A lot of them are wanted criminals in China.
“Their organization smuggles them out of China into Canada, then to the United States. They’re brought in specifically to commit crimes, usually robbery of everything from jewelry stores to gambling dens. When things get hot, they’re smuggled somewhere else. They’re violent enough to be feared even by the tongs.”
“And exactly how are you going to use this?”
“Follow this inscrutable Chinese and learn.”
He opened the door, but I couldn’t let one question hang. I grabbed his elbow.
“One question, Harry. How do you know all this? I mean the oaths and all that.”
I think he wanted to be out of the car before I asked the question. I could see his lips tighten.
“What’s the difference?”
It came out harsher than he’d intended. He saw my expression and softened his.
“Sometime I’ll tell you, Mike. I will. This isn’t the time. We’ve got business.”
I nodded.
He was out of the car with both feet on the sidewalk in around sixty seconds flat. I said a prayer that “the plan” did not call for blistering speed. I followed him, but not without grabbing and donning my Henry Osterwald hat from the back seat.
18
The wind out of the east was whipping twenty-one-degree air salted with snow particles into our faces. In spite of it, I could feel the beading of perspiration on my forehead and upper lip.
We moved down Beach Street from the opposite direction of the no-name coffee shop. I was about four paces behind Harry in case they recognized us together. There was no trouble keeping up.
I had no idea what kind of watch the youth gang would keep on a brothel at nine-thirty in the morning. There was hardly anyone in sight on the street.
The only activity we saw was in the poultry shop that we passed on our right. Ancient wooden cages along the walls held a dusty, feathery collection of live chickens and ducks. Three old Chinese women seemed to be singing the morning gossip to each other while they waited their turn. A fourth watched a rail-thin clerk of somewhere between twenty and forty years grab the quacking duck she pointed to out of the cage and lock one wing behind the other. They were as oblivious to us as I prayed the rest of the local citizenry might be.
When we reached the door of the brothel, I felt the same grappling sensation in the stomach that I had two nights before. Harry neither speeded up nor slowed down as he turned right and pushed open the door. I checked the street one last time. No one.
I scuttled in and closed the door. I was a step behind Harry as we crossed through that mangy hallway to the stairs. The only light was still what fought its way through a century of grime on the door glass, but as far as I could see, there was no one inside. My observation was confirmed by the fact that no one had killed us. Yet.
We climbed. I’ve heard steps creak, but these roared. I’m sure it was magnified in my mind, but every step was like jumping on the tail of another cat.
Harry stopped a step from the top. I was crowding him from behind, squinting to squeeze every bit of information out of the pitiful rays of light that made it to the top of the stairs.
There were two doors. I couldn’t remember which one we used two nights before. I remembered the story, “The Lady or the Tiger,” and thought of the clear possibility of finding “two tigers, no lady.”
I whispered, “Which door?”
Harry turned to make what I suppose was a guess, but instead drove an elbow into my chest so hard I had to grab for what I hoped was a rail to keep from taking the stairs backwards. He was recoiling from a blast of daylight that hit him with surprise harder than he hit me. The first door had swung open. From the gasp of the figure that stood framed in the door, Harry and I had thrown as much of a shock as we received.
From the bulk of the black shadow, I had instant fear that we were dealing with the sumo hulk we’d run into there before. Then I saw the edges of the shadow billowing and showing light. The silhouette under the billowing was massive, but not gargantuan.
A flood of hot Chinese poured like staccato little fireworks out of whoever it was we were looking at. Whatever it meant didn’t slow Harry in the slightest. He was a pace behind the figure that was attempting to disappear behind the door. He kicked back the door and grabbed the elbow of the Dragon Lady who had been our effusive hostess of two nights previous. Once he had her stopped, he leaned back to let the wave of pain he must have unleashed in his ribs subside. I was inside with the door shut by the time the hot lava began pouring out of her mouth again.
In a tight sheath, she had been merely obese. In a free-flowing robe, she expanded to fill the material.
Harry bellowed, “ Silence! ”
Not “Quiet,” or “Could you hold it down?” or even “Stifle it.” Just plain “Silence!” I thought I had warped into a classic Charlie Chan movie.
Harry knew what he was doing. She froze.
He took off the hat and opened the coat so she could see who she was dealing with. I was sure that by that time she knew we were not immigration officers. Harry was back working from ground zero.
“Listen to me, Old Mother. You can do yourself great good or great harm in the next few minutes. You would do well to pay attention.” He kept it in English.
She looked stunned. At least she left a gap for Harry to speak.
“I have information. I assume you can reach the Fu Shan Chu? ”
Whatever it meant, it grabbed her attention. She didn’t move. She didn’t answer, either.
Harry grabbed a piece of white paper off a desk to his left. He took a pen out of his pocket and wrote in large numerals, “438.” He pushed it in front of her to emphasize the question.
Her mouth seemed stuck. She just nodded.
“Then tell him this. I have inside information on the Big Circle Boys. There’s a robbery planned. I know when. The high-stakes gambling den.”
He pointed in the general direction of Beach Street. She was stone still. But her eyes flared a little when he pointed in what must have been the right direction.
“You have two choices, Mother. You can pass the information to the Fu Shan Chu so he can set up an ambush. You’ll gain much face. They’ll be very grateful. Or…”
She gave it a second before breaking her silence.
“What?” Their eyes were deadlocked.
“Or when the raid occurs, I can get word to the Fu Shan Chu that you were the one who tipped the Big Circle boys to the location of the den.” He touched her cheek. “You may not take those pretty features to an old age, Mother.”