Ghosts of Chinatown (7 page)

Todd peels out of the door.

Looking down the stairwell, he catches a glimpse of Angela flying out the door.

***
   

Liang uses the remote to click off the television and announces to Jasmine and Cam, “Now the drama begins.”

Chapter 13

Chinatown during the day is completely different than the deserted spooky town of the night. Now, it seems like a slice of Hong Kong with wall-to-wall people shopping, hawking goods. Herbal shops have dried seahorses, weird roots and fungi on display, meat stores feature whole barbecue ducks and chickens in their store windows with heads still attached, and the noisy din from tourists, hawkers and customers makes it really hard for Todd to find Angela. “Angela, Angela!” but there are no takers.

Finally, he spots her in a crowd down the street. “Angela, wait!”

She takes a quick glance around and sees him and she bounds off, weaving back into the crowd. Todd gives chase but Angela’s fast, wending her way through the crowd.

From afar, Todd spots her darting into a little store, the Bamboo Curios. Todd stops running to catch his breath. He quickly takes out two nitroglycerine pills, puts them under his tongue and makes his way up the hundred yards to the shop.

He enters and is amused to discover that the Bamboo Curios is a small emporium chock full of Asian knickknacks. Cheap red lanterns hang alongside fake birds in bamboo cages. Bamboo toy flutes, Buddhist funeral papers and red lucky money envelopes are some of the hundreds of items in the jam-packed shop. Not a lot of customers come here, evidence being the layer of dust on the counter.

Behind the dusty counter stands Susan Drysdale, an elegant Caucasian woman in her fifties, wearing a Chinese blouse and silk pants. There’s not a wrinkle or line in her face but that doesn’t stop her from looking like the world is bearing down on her shoulders.
 

Todd walks up to the proprietor. “There was a girl that ran in here a few moments ago. Where’d she go?”

“Hello, nice to meet you too.”

“My bad. I’m Todd and I want to see the girl that came in here just now.”

“What do I look like, a tour guide for a lonely hearts club?”
 

“It’s not like that. She found me first, then left.”

“Haven’t you got a better line than that?”
 

“It’s the truth.”
Sort of.

Susan studies Todd. “If she left, maybe she doesn’t want you to find her. You must have spooked her.”

“Yeah, she freaked but it’s not me, it’s my place. Something crazy happened. The statues in my room blew up.”

“Really?” Susan is amused and skeptical. “You must be very talented.”

“Not me. My landlord’s been renovating and something’s always going wrong. Knowing him, they probably weren’t set on the pedestals properly and the piano sound must have caused vibrations that knocked the statues off.”

“Renovation? You mean you’re staying at Liang’s place?”

Now, this is a surprise to Susan, or so it seems.

“He rented the room with the piano to me. How do you know about Liang?”

“Look around Chinatown. Nobody’s fixing anything so if someone’s doing a renovation, we all know about it. Liang’s been fixing that piano and that room for years.”

“So I gather.”

“If he’s willing to rent to you, you must be special.”

“Wish Angela thought so.”

“What Angela thinks, only Angela knows.”
 

“Yeah? How do you know?”

Susan reaches under the counter and pulls out a clear unlabeled screw-top bottle and two shot glasses. “She’s my daughter.”

“Really? I should have figured. Where is she? I want to know her better.”
 

“You and every other guy in Chinatown and beyond. Take a number.”

“It’s not about sex.”

“Are you gay?”

“I’m as hetero as you can get but there’s something else about her that... that... there’s more to her than most other girls.”

“You’ve got that part right. There is something about her that’s… different.” Susan pours two drinks. “Scratch her surface and you find a woman full of fear.”

“I could tell that. But why?”

Susan gives Todd the once-over. “Have a drink.”

Todd doesn’t touch the glass. Susan shrugs and downs hers in a single gulp.

“Five years ago, her stepsister was murdered by her boyfriend and Angela was the first to find her.”

Todd’s face goes white. This is hitting a little too close to home. “Oh.”

Susan snorts. “Oh? All you can you say is ‘Oh’?” Well, they have never found the bastard that took her life. She’s been in therapy ever since. She doesn’t know who she can or cannot trust. And frankly, I don’t blame her one bit.”

Susan pours herself another glass and again offers some to Todd. Todd takes a whiff and gasps. “What is this? Smells wicked and worse.”

“Fen Jiu. Chinese overproof alcohol. Fen Jiu has powers of vision, to see through the darkness of one’s soul. It helps you remember, it helps you forget, it helps bring perception into focus. It helps you dream dreams, it helps bring you back to earth.”

Susan downs this glass too in a single gulp.
 

Todd follows but it takes every ounce of willpower to keep him from spitting it out. “Tastes worse than paint thinner.”

“But it works.”

Susan reaches under the counter and retrieves another bottle of Fen Jiu and puts it into a plastic bag.

“Ten bucks. This is the only place in Chinatown that sells this and I don’t sell to everyone. You want it?”

“If it’s so special, why are you selling to me?”

“Because you know Liang and if there’s anybody that I feel for, it’s that crazy old Chinaman.”

“He drinks this rat piss?”

 
“Drink it? Absolutely. He’s my best customer. Top shelf. He too has a past that he doesn’t want to remember.”

“Hard to figure anything out about that weird duck.”
 

“Honor. Future. Loss. Who knows?” Susan hands the bag to Todd. “Ten dollars. You want it?”

“I’ll take three.” Todd reaches into his pocket, pulls out his wallet and forks over thirty dollars while Susan pulls out two more bottles from below the counter. “Can you tell Angela I have to see her again?”

“You think I can be bought for thirty bucks?”

“I’m not trying to buy her.” Todd looks out the window. “I know her pain.”

Todd swings around back to Susan but there’s no one there.
 

His eyes widen in terror. “Hello! Hello!”

But there is no response.

He quickly leaves.

Chapter 14

A battered and bleeding Jasmine sits at the grand piano, massaging the keys into the discordant, unnerving melody of single notes that was heard earlier in the empty room. She’s not a talented pianist. The movement of her fingers shows a stiffness in the motions. However, that doesn’t stop the mood from coming through—the simple tune embodies Jasmine’s pain, something that no one living or dead can truly understand.

The blood from her wounds seeps onto the keys as she piano plays—it was her blood that flowed onto the keys earlier.

The door opens. Jasmine stops abruptly.

Todd enters and closes the door, then looks at the room. His nerves unbend.

There is no Jasmine but the place has been ransacked. A complete shambles. All the furniture is capsized, his laptop is gone, his music books strewn throughout the room, but most horrifically, he sees blood smeared across the ivory keys of the piano and oozing over the edges.

Mysteriously, the porcelain statues of the old Chinese men, including the two that exploded, are intact.

***

Liang and Cam watch Todd in rapt attention on the television in the gallery but that is all they have in common. Inside, their emotions couldn’t have been more different.

Liang’s thoughts are only of Jasmine and of revenge on Todd. He knows that he is right, that Todd butchered his beloved daughter, and it is only a question of time before he can provide the definitive proof that Jasmine wants so that he can accomplish the only thing that matters to him—a mission of revenge.

Cam, on the other hand, is scheming away like the lowlife he is.
How much longer do I have to put up with this crazy Chinaman? When I am going to get some real action and snuff that miserable piano player?
And most importantly,
how can I screw Angela?

Liang pulls out the Tibetan dagger imbedded in his desk and hands it to Cam. Cam holds it up and examines the glinting blade. Cam gets up and starts walking toward the door.

“Doesn’t it slay you, Liang, to have me to do your dirty work? A proud guy like you having to rely on a scumbag like me.”

“Results are all I care about.” The older man glares at Cam as he swaggers out.

“Then I got a job to do.” Without turning around, Cam gives a mock salute and is out the door.

Chapter 15
 

Todd rubs vigorously, trying to clean the blood off the piano with a rag and cleanser. No success and he looks up in despair.
Liang’s going to kill me.
It makes him rub even harder that the stains refuse to be removed.
 

He goes to the kitchen and grabs a scouring pad, one of those with a yellow sponge that is topped with a green scouring surface. “Please don’t scratch the piano.”

At the keyboard, he tries a delicate scouring. The blood still refuses to come off the piano and now, some of the red residue clings to his hands.
 

He slumps back, dejected. “Damn.” Sensing the vacant eyes of a porcelain mandarin staring at him, he picks it off the pedestal, examining it.
 

He notices nothing out of the ordinary and he puts it back. Had he been paying more attention, though, he would have noticed that the eyes of the rotund figure had little cameras fitted into them.

Actually, had he been paying really careful attention, he would have discovered that there were carefully hidden cameras, sound and imaging devices throughout the apartment unit, as well as other little surprises.

Shaking, he drifts to the overturned sofa, takes one of the bottles of Fen Jiu out of the paper bag and twists off the cap. “Power of light in the void or power of bullshit on a dummy.”

He drinks directly out of the bottle. He downs it slowly, grimacing bitterly as he forces down each swallow of the fiery drink.
Can’t believe I actually paid for this. But if it works… well, it works.

There’s a wild look in his eyes as he brings the bottle with him back to the accursed piano. He resumes the gentle rubbing with renewed hope but the stains still refuse to come off the keyboard.
 

Suddenly feeling a tingling warmth, he inspects his hands. They seem redder than ever. Is he imagining things or is it the Fen Jiu softening his guard? He tries the cloth to remove the blood but it doesn’t work. He wipes harder then suddenly drops the rag. Smoke begins to emit from the red stains on his hands.

“No. No. Not the hands. No!” Of all the parts of the body that a human has, to a pianist, the most important is his hands. They are gold, they are life.

Without warning, his hands spontaneously ignite.
 

“Damn it!” Screaming, he waves his flaming hands in the air as he dashes back to the kitchen.

He turns the tap on full blast and puts his hands under the downpour, hoping to douse the fire, but the water has no effect. He cranks the tap full bore and the gushing water douses the flames.

“Thank God.”

Breathing quickly, he looks at his hands. The red stains are gone but suddenly his hands ignite again.

“No, please no.”

***

“In a little while, Mr. Mathers, your hands will be the least of your worries.”

Liang’s gaze is fixed on the monitor, seeing the results of his handiwork. A lifetime of preparation has gone into this. As the set designer of a small theater, he had to learn how to do everything. Unlike the bigger houses where you could hire specialist tradesmen, Liang, or Huang as he was known then, had to learn many different skills. Carpentry, plumbing, electrical, painting, costume design were just the beginning.
 

But he wanted to direct and in Beijing, he was pigeonholed and could never get out of that rut. That, plus he was not a willing politician. He hated playing the game of parties, sucking up to Party officials, to top-notch actors and their agents.
 

He would have rotted at the Xing-xing had not an indie theater group booked Xing-xing for their Beijing performances. Had Zaphos had any inkling at all, they would have researched and discovered that the Beijing theater was far past its heyday and the declining Xing-xing was in a back-alley location, hence the miserably attended performances. Like all good stories where treasure can be found in the unexpected, Huang found his in Zaphos; he met Susan.

He hardly knew English, her Chinese was even worse, but there was magic… and opportunity. She convinced him that if he really wanted to direct, he had to leave China…

***

Todd again runs the water onto his burning hands. Suddenly the fire on his hands stops. At the same time, the tap shuts off by itself.
 

“What the…”

Absolutely stunned, Todd presses his hands together, then wiggles his fingers as if playing the piano. Everything is fine and there is no pain, no stains on his hands.

All that we see or seem is but a dream within a dream.
It’s the echo from the mind’s recesses from so long ago.

He buries his face into his hands. “Why? Why?”

The truth is, Todd suspects the answer and much as he’d like to leave this place, this city, there is something compelling him to stay, something he has searched for for years and something he thinks he will find soon.

The truth.

He slowly pulls his hands off his face, then rubs his fingers against his palms, all the while staring at his hands.

He whimpers, “The dead are dead, aren’t they?” His teeth start chattering. “You’re dead, right? Right?”
 

He muses, his mind on Jasmine… again. He’s almost positive that he did not have anything to do with her death, yet there’s a little voice that speaks to him every now and then. “Todd, why did you do it? You could have stopped, you should have stopped but you didn’t.” He feels a crushing guilt but at the same time just doesn’t believe that is was him.