Crooked Hearts (21 page)

“Mr. Wing, we’ve got the tiger. You’ve got the dog and the monkey, the goat and the rat—you’ve got all the rest, but they’re no good to you without the tiger. My sister and I are prepared to sell it to you for ten thousand dollars.”

That got his attention. He raised a porcelain cup to his lips and took a silent sip, dark eyes hooded. Reuben liked the idea that good old American directness had thrown him off his subtle Oriental stride. Of course, if he now said, “I have no idea what you’re talking about, Mr. Ssssmith,” they’d be back where they started. After a long, intense moment, during which Wing kept his flat black eyes fastened on Grace, he set his cup down and rose, his movements languid and, to Reuben, offensively graceful. A tall glass-and-teakwood case stood in the corner by the window; he went to it, opened the door, and took out a small object. Then he crossed back to Grace’s chair and made her a low bow. “Miss Smith, a gift for you.”

Reuben slid down farther in his chair. First Doc, now the Godfather—what was it that compelled sensible men, within minutes of meeting her, to shower Grace with presents? This one was a miniature bronze statue of a woman, he noted sourly, about the size of his little finger. Even from here, he could see that it was lovely. He hoped it was worth a fortune.

“Oh, she’s
beautiful,”
Grace gushed, cradling the statue in her palms. “Thank you very much—I couldn’t possibly accept it.” She didn’t hand it back, though.

“But I insisst. You must have her—I knew it as soon as I saw you. She is a bodhissattva—an earthly guide to Nirvana in the Buddhist faith; to you, a kind of guardian angel.”

Reuben groaned and sank lower.

“She is very old, from the Tang dynasty. Much older than this tiger of which you speak, Mr. Smith, and—forgive me for being crasss,” he apologized to Grace with another bow, “much more valuable. I am a wealthy man, it’s no ssecret. My art collection is, permit me to say, extremely fine. The piece you claim to have is only a Ming bauble, and so I am at a losss. Why would I pay the ridiculous amount you suggest, even if I were in possession of the rest of the collection?”

Reuben blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “Well, I don’t know, Mark, it’s your obsession, not mine. The only reason I can think of is because some rich Ming guy got himself buried with this bauble, and that warms your peculiar little heart.”

The only sign of rage was the flush on his sallow cheeks and the fleet, serpentine dart of his tongue over his thin lips. He stayed motionless for ten seconds, then pivoted with the grace of a dancer and moved leisurely back to the window. There he took up a pose, hands in his trouser pockets, one ankle crossed negligently over the other, head back against the wall. The. confident San Francisco businessman—except that he had white hair down to his elbows, and all the warmth of a rattlesnake in his dead black eyes.

Deliberately, Reuben waited. Just as Wing opened his mouth to speak, he cut him off. “My sister and I didn’t come here to haggle or negotiate. The price is ten thousand, period. Take it or leave it, and don’t waste our time.” He took out his watch and flipped it open. “It’s up to you. We’ve got an appointment in thirty minutes with another potential customer.” He snapped the watch closed and drummed his fingers on the chair arm.

Through stiff-lips, Wing managed to say, “Do you have the tiger with you now?”

Reuben laughed rudely. “That’s a joke, right?”

“How do I even know you have it?”

“You don’t.”

His cheeks were mottled, his hands balled into bony fists in his pockets. He was too angry to speak, and Reuben decided he’d pushed him far enough.

“As you say, you’re a wealthy man,” he said placatingly; “ten thousand’s nothing to you. Then too, what good is your zodiacal calendar if it’s got a year missing? Think what a shame it would be if you botched up your one chance to complete the set, Mark, just because you and I can’t stand each other.”

Wing had himself under control again, the reptilian smile back in place. “What you say is sensible, Mr. Ssmith. I find that, on second thought, I am agreeable to your terms.”

“The statue for ten thousand?”

“Just so.”

“When?”

“Tomorrow.”

“Good.” Hiding his jubilation, Reuben put his hands on his knees and started to get up.

“I attach a condition, however. A small one. Of no importance to you, but absolutely essential to me.”

Reuben sank back in his chair, steepling his fingers against his chin. “I’m listening,” he said warily. Wing’s smile got weirder by the minute, and it was getting on his nerves.

“Miss Smith must bring the tiger. And she must come alone.”

“No.” He was on his feet, shaking his head, before Wing finished the first sentence. “Out of the question. Absolutely not, no way in—”

“Then we have no bargain.”

“Fine, then we have no bargain. It’s been nice—”

“Don’t be silly, Algernon, of course we accept Mr. Wing’s condition.”

“The hell we do. I’m telling you, Gus—”

She rose and went past him toward Wing, who was still lounging against the wall. When she stopped in front of him, a look of wonder erased the subtle antagonism in his face. She held out both hands, but he was too stunned to react; when his wits came back, he reached out as if she were handing him the keys to heaven. Or Nirvana. “It’s a deal, Mr. Wing,” she said in a low voice, holding his penetrating gaze.

“Tomorrow evening at nine?” he whispered.

“Yess.”

Was she mimicking him? Reuben felt torn between amusement and outrage. “Hold it. Hold on one damn minute. She’s not coming by herself. Not at night, not at any time, and that’s—”

“Until tomorrow,” Grace murmured, sultry and oblivious. Wing hadn’t heard a word he’d said either. Reuben watched, open-mouthed, as they squeezed each other’s hands and drifted apart. “Coming, Algernon?” She glided by him into the white corridor. The tiny servant must have been lurking by the door; she bowed to Grace and walked away. Grace followed, calling, “Algie?” over her shoulder.

Stymied, he glared at Wing. The Godfather hadn’t recovered yet; he was still grinning a big, stupid grin, like a man realizing his river card gave him a belly-buster straight. “Forget it, she’s not coming,” Reuben threw at him, and stalked out of the room. The last thing he noticed was the bronze bodhisattva on the table by Grace’s chair. Priceless, for all he knew. She hadn’t taken it, and he was glad.

Glad?
Glad?
He hurried after her, primed for a fight.

10

That there is a devil is a thing doubted by none but such as are under the influence of the devil.

—Cotton Mather

“A
RE YOU STARTING UP
again? Reuben, my throat’s sore from arguing with you. I’m going in, by myself, right now.”

Although he was close enough to touch her, he could barely see her through the fog. Across the street from where they were standing, nothing but a wavering pool of yellow light marked the door to No. 722. The sidewalk was muffled in damp silence. Occasionally a cloudy human form loomed out of the wet mist and disappeared back into it, quiet as smoke.

“I don’t want you going in there alone.” His own voice sounded strange, almost disembodied. Also hoarse from arguing, which they’d been doing for the better part of the last twenty-eight hours.

Grace stamped her foot on the wet pavement. “You told me yourself they only hurt each other. You said no matter how vicious the tongs are, they never do anything to white people, they keep the violence inside their own quarter and never—”

“I said
usually.”
The urge to stuff his handkerchief in her mouth had never been stronger. “This tong’s already broken the rules by holding up a Wells Fargo stage and terrorizing the passengers. Wing isn’t playing with a full deck, Gus, so we can’t predict what he’ll do.”

“He wants the statue,” she countered stubbornly. “That’s one thing we can predict.”

“Not as much as he wants you.” They always came back to that. For the life of him, Reuben couldn’t understand why that didn’t end the argument, with him the hands-down winner. But she treated his best, most salient debate point as if it was some whiny, childish irrelevancy.

“Oh, for Pete’s sake, Reuben. Wing might be a little unhinged, and I’ll admit he does seem to have a yen for me—” She broke off to nudge him in the ribs, trying to make him laugh. He didn’t. She sighed. “I’m a big girl, I can take care of myself. Wing doesn’t frighten me—I’ve handled plenty of men much scarier than the Godfather.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you have,” he snapped before he could stop himself. She went stiff as a poker. “Damn it, Grace, is that supposed to make me feel better?”

“I couldn’t care less how it makes you feel,” she said icily. “I’m going in, and you can’t stop me.”

“The hell I can’t.” They glared at each other through the mist. As usual, they weren’t getting anywhere.

“Look,” she said after a minute, stiff-lipped but trying to sound placating, “we’ve been through this a hundred times. He won’t give us the money unless I go in by myself and get it. Nothing will happen to me. He’ll flirt a little, I’ll be nice to him, he’ll hand over the money, I’ll leave. Give me one hour—”

“Half an hour.” He couldn’t stand the thought of Grace being nice to Wing for a whole hour.

“No, an
hour,”
she insisted. “It’s not likely that I’ll need it, but I want the extra time just in case. Along with everything else, I don’t want to have to worry about you charging in at the wrong minute to rescue me.”

He hated it, but he finally said, “All right,” through his teeth.

She sighed, and lost a little of her combative posture. “Good.” She looked over her shoulder at Wing’s house. “Do you have the gun?”

He patted his coat pocket.

“You won’t need it, of course. But just in case, remember—it only fires two shots, and it’s no good beyond about six feet.”

“I’ll remember,” he said grimly. “And you’ve got the tiger?”

She patted the purse under her arm.

“Okay.”

“Okay. Well. Guess I’d better go.”

“Yeah.”

But she didn’t move. Did she want him to touch her? He wanted to—but he was afraid if he did, he wouldn’t let go. He’d drag her all the way home and kiss ten thousand dollars good-bye.

At the last second, he reached for her anyway. She was in the act of turning away; his hand brushed her shoulder blade clumsily, as if he were patting her on the back. She muttered something and kept going. In seconds the fog swallowed her.

She reappeared in the pool of light across the street. He saw her lift the dragon knocker and let it fall, but the thick mist pillowed the sound; he could barely hear it. The heavy door swung open.

“This is crazy.”

He said it out loud, and the truth of it had him moving toward the house at a jog, stumbling once over some invisible obstruction in the road. He was stepping up on the opposite curb when Grace vanished through the door. It closed behind her with a muted, final-sounding thud, and Reuben pounded to a halt. Even from here, the entrance to the house was hardly discernible, swaddled in the chilly, dripping, shifting mist. Yesterday he’d joked to Wing’s servant about a moat, and now the fog made one; the illusion of impregnability was persuasive, and it kept him planted where he was. Kept him from storming the castle.

He streaked his hands through his wet hair. Maybe he was acting like the worried old maid Grace had been calling him all afternoon. He moved toward the street lamp on the near side of the Beckett Street corner; taking a position against the damp wall of an anonymous, unlit building, a foot or two beyond the weak circle of light the street lamp cast, he waited.

And waited. It was too dark here to read his watch. How the hell was he supposed to know when an hour was up? The hell with that anyway, he’d knock on Wing’s door any damn time he felt like it. Like now, for instance. The fog and the quiet were stretching his nerves. He decided to reconnoiter.

An alley ran between Beckett and Kearny streets; the back of Wing’s fortress of a house must face on it. He wished he’d worn shoes instead of boots, so he wouldn’t make so damn much noise when he walked. Beckett Street was deserted, but in the alley a rat party was in progress. The lure must be the rotting garbage he could smell all around him.

Moving east, he stopped when he calculated he was looking up at the mesh of windows and fire escapes at the back of Wing’s building. Where would the Godfather entertain Miss Smith? He peered hard at the lighted windows, but most of them were curtained, and the ones that weren’t were empty.

To his left was another three-story building, and every one of its windows was lit up, although most were covered with thin, discreet shades. With a start, Reuben realized it was Wing’s brothel. The House of Celestial Peace and Fulfillment.

While he watched, the figure of a woman passed a third-floor window of the whorehouse, reappearing an instant later in an adjacent window of Wing’s house. It took him a second to register the significance. They connected! “Very convenient,” Doc had labeled the proximity of the two buildings. Wait until Reuben told him
how
convenient. He was shaking his head in amused disgust when a noise behind him made him freeze. A rat, probably, or maybe a cat, since it was louder than—

Sparks ignited in front of his eyes, in time with a resounding
fwack
and an excruciating thud against his left temple. The ground coming up didn’t hurt; a black pillow cushioned his fall. Nothing. Zero.

“Careful, these stairs are sometimes a trifle sslippery.”

Not half as sslipery as you, thought Grace, avoiding Wing’s helping hand by pretending not to see it. How the hell had she gotten herself into this predicament? The deal was done: he had the tiger and she had the money, all ten thousand of it, safely tucked away in her pocketbook. It was time to go home, not take a tour of the catacombs.

But Wing had been so insistent, so persuasive. He’d offered a toast with sam shu—Chinese brandy—to the successful conclusion of their “bissness affair,” and invited her to have a look at his art collection. Right around then he’d started calling her “thee” and “thou,” speaking of “thy gracious goodness,” and how she couldn’t deny him the pleasure of showing off a few trifles from his humble little museum. It would give him so much pleasure, especially since he rarely had an opportunity to show the collection to anyone, “for reasons I’m certain I don’t have to explain to you, Miss Ssmith.” Meaning he’d stolen it, she assumed. The honor of being taken into the Godfather’s confidence was a dubious one, particularly when all she could think about was getting out of here, flying home with Reuben, and celebrating their incredible windfall. But she had to admit she was curious about Wing’s art collection. “Then too, surely you are anxious to see the tiger sculpture back among its fellows at lasst? Come, it will take but a moment, and I promise you shall be amply rewarded for your time.” An intriguing invitation, but he’d left out one little detail: the collection was in his basement.