The Man Game (28 page)

Ha ha, no sah—yowlp, said the watchman as he succumbed to a headlock. Constable Miller took the big aproned man to the ground in the matter of a single rotation, whereupon he pinned him no less elegantly than the cowboy does the calf and motioned for his men to move in. He pulled the bamboo axe that rested against the watchman's spine and threw it to the side even as he unravelled the hemp to hogtie him to a post.

Go on, he said to Clough. No time to waste, I'll meet you in there.

With unhurried steps, Clough travelled down the first secret hall in the fruit store, and shortly came to a door at the left that had just been hacked to pieces. The two po-lice could be heard striding up a narrow staircase beyond. Despite the clamour, guests of the building seemed not to have reacted with any noise of their own, which Clough believed must be a promising sign. He waited as the one with the axe took a big stab at the wall. At the first cut a terrified voice howled out on the other side, its owner proceeding to scramble down a secret hall running perpendicular to their place in the stairwell. The po-lice spared no moment. An opening was hacked in the wall and the two men took off through it in search of
the gambling den. Who knows what other illicit activities were contained on this single, hidden floor in this unspoken-for building, thought Clough, following right behind with no time to make inspections of his own. He could hear a growing sense of alarm. The inhabitants had caught the drift.

Seems we got the jump on them this time around, eh? said the po-lice, laughing as he reared the axe and struck another wall. While he pried the axe out again, all the other noises in the building went abruptly silent. This is the po-lice. Open this up or we'll break you down.

A single passive voice replied: Okay, sah, okay.

The po-lice eyed each other one final time as they steadied their nerves. The door was unlocked in two places and pulled open. The po-lice were greeted into the room. They came with the billyclub and the axe in plain view, and Clough brought up the rear with no weapon. The po-lice were immediately giving orders for everyone to stay seated and quiet.

Clough was the last to regard the situation fully. Each table was candelit; a single window faced south to the incoming white cold rain from Seattle. The wood-panelled room was big enough to comfortably fit three rectangular tables and smelled like the blankets around a man who'd passed in his sleep.

Every table was filled to capacity with six men, all shoulder to shoulder in silence and submission as the po-lice trolled through them. Clough could easily discern, as anyone could, that the clientele were among the most rapacious, despairing examples of mankind it was possible to import. A whole tableful of men might count a single set of teeth. These were the diehard clowns of the Orient, a criminal class from another earth. But no matter their villainous features, the only thing the Chinamen were doing was drinking tea.

In the centre of each table sat a plain ceramic pot with a slimly curved spout and in front of every man perched a little teacup. A puckish Chinaman took his elbow off the table and with an air of innocence raised his cup for a sip. When he put the cup back down it gave Clough an idea. He reached over
and picked up the nearest teacup, took his own sip, and declared: This tea's cold as yesterday's piss.

Take a look over here, eh, said the po-lice; and then, seeing a figure appear in the doorway: Hallo, Constable, welcome to our crime scene. A bunch a tea drinkers.

Miller was holding the watchman's notorious bamboo axe, and when he'd properly assessed the situation, he felt comfortable putting it to rest beside a chair near the door.

How's our watchman? Clough asked.

Subdued.

Take a look over here, eh, said a po-liceman.

What Clough had mistaken for a deeply shadowed far corner was actually a discreet opening to a long narrow corridor, and all the way along it were tables with men seated drinking tea. Heavy curtains were drawn across the windows between the tables, presenting to the street below the impression of a regular floor in a slumhouse. In fact all the rooms were set back from the exterior to make space for this infestation.

Was gambling to blame for the plight of the Chinaman, wondered Clough, or a reaction to it? He hoped to find his answer in the eyes of the Chinamen at the tables, but they expertly evaded his gaze. Each man displayed a stoicism in direct relation to his gambling abilities. The better the gambler, the more stoic. It was not long before Clough figured out which table was the high rollers, the risk-takers, the young or unlucky seeded with a confidence man or two. Clough saw all the same gambler breeds he'd seen his whole life growing up around miners and railroad drifters. The poker face was the gambler's only feature not completely devoured by terror. The soul, the mind, the stomach were all gnawed down to a sponge filled with maggots. All that remained was the face, a rigid mask of pain. Reminded Clough of something he used to hear at the bar when he was a child: Best poker face is a broken nose and two shiners.

The po-lice paced around between the tables eyeing everything and everyone, twitching their eyebrows and moustaches. The room was otherwise so silent and motionless that when a
Chinaman broke the stillness by scratching his neck it brought on an unexpected search. Stand up, said the po-lice. Turn around face the wall put your hands on the wall spread your legs. He shook down the Chinaman for evidence. When nothing was found on his person the po-lice roughly sat him back down at the table. Stay where you are, said the po-lice, nobody move.

Don't think we're going to find nothing on anyone, said Constable Miller, but we can't rule it out.

Should we search them all?

Miller stood at the juncture between the corridor and the room, his sights on the whole scene. His skin looked mottled and flushed and his breathing was heavier than earlier in the stakeout, but otherwise one wouldn't suspect that moments ago he'd subdued an ogre. He crossed his arms and said: Anyone believe this is a teashop?

No, sir, said the po-lice.

What a you think, Clough?

What I see are men who'd use their mothers and daughters to settle a debt, said Clough. If any one a them is here for tea and fine conversation then I lost my sense a smell.

Search them all, said Miller.

The po-lice lined the whole group against the wall and searched them.

See, Miller said, turning his head to speak as if to Clough alone, but in the same bellowing voice, that's how you know you'll get your most rats. New Year's Eve, they think we let our guard down. They unfortunately got another thing coming.

Miller watched the whole ordeal with great attention as Clough wandered the room and up and down the corridor, losing his balance only once. When the thirty-odd Chinamen were declared inexplicably clean, the constable took aside the one dressed as the proprietor and questioned him more violently.

This tea house, said the Chinaman. No gamble here.

When we find our evidence, Miller said, all these men go to jail. And you, sir, for operating a fan tan, you go back to China, hear me?

He left the proprietor slumped in the corner and returned to his men with his nostrils fanning. Where's our damn evidence? growled Miller.

Clough knocked on a nearby wall. Must be in here, he said. Or down here, he said, pointing to the floor.

Miller squinted his eyes as he considered the possibility. The cords of his neck were heaving. He flipped the watchman's bamboo axe up into the air and caught the handle again as it fell. The Chinamen, with their backs to the scene, craned to see as the constable wound up and gave one sporting swing at the panelling next to the end of one table. When the cleaver blade connected an explosion of chips and chunks flew off in all directions, and as he yanked the axe free, as sure as the guts of mankind, a cache of smooth black dominoes spilled to the floor.

A single Chinaman got spooked, and in a paroxysm of madness tried to make an escape through the door, knocking over both po-lice and bumping the nub of Clough's shoulder, but Miller took him out with another swing of that watchman's axe, wedged it deeply into the man's spine, and within the hour the man was dead.

Having fetched the horse and carriage and gathered the arrested in the back with their wrists, ankles, and pigtails bound together in one length of hemp rope, Clough steadied the Clydesdales with the reins as the po-lice carried out the body of the slain Chinaman. The body swung back and forth between their grips as they received him to the street. He was covered in a carpet, but a hand steadily dripping blood from the fingers was in plain view and the darkening stain on the carpet left no question in the minds of passersby. A rising choir of anxiety rippled down the street until the children stopped their play. The watchman, in the back of the carriage with the others, stood to his full height to see the dead man. The watchman's eyes were bruised and red-seamed, and his mouth was smashed. Siddown, said the po-lice, and he did as he was told. They lugged the corpse onto the floor of the carriage.

Oh my oh my, said the unexpected harpstrings of a lady's voice. Clough was jarred sober (briefly) to discover the seraphic presence of Molly Erwagen there beside him, touching a kid glove to her cosmic mouth, beautifully horrified at the sight of the Chinaman's corpse, the hand dripping blood. The two lumpen po-lice stood mid-hoist, mouths agape, immobilized, blood splashing on their boots as Molly moved towards them. Her most humbly elegant fineries tousled about her louche figure; she neither floated above the earth nor ever seemed totally locked to the ground. The same forces that kept a man in his skin didn't touch her. It seemed that at any given moment she could lift her legs and fly away, kill them all, and give birth. She was accompanied at a respectable distance by her skookum ward Toronto. Whatever's the matter? she asked up to Clough.

Dear Christ, Molly, cried Clough. Avert your fragile eyes, I beg you. What sour luck. Aw, Molly, a man's business's never pretty but this one's a mighty gruesome incident.

He's met his fate, she said, drawing closer.

What the—are you doing, Mrs. Erwagen, cried Clough, wasting your grace in these squalid parts?

Errands, she said. A lady's errands. Tofu …, she said ambiguously.

What the—I shouldn't think your husb—ah, dear sweet … don't lift that rug up.

Indeed, she was raising the frilled edge of the carpet as the po-lice fumbled to keep the weighty body off the ground. Finally the whole thing unrolled and the body lay fully exposed upon it like a man asleep on the living room floor, his cold nose in the air leaking blood.

Aw, for the love a—, said one po-liceman, throwing his helmet aside in frustration. Now look what you done.

It wasn't me, said the second po-liceman, quickly folding the rug over the deceased again. Please, ma'am, I got to ask you to step back now.

He must've done something awful for it to come to such an end, said Molly.

Indeed he did, replied Clough. But these are matters for the po-lice and the judges to sort oot. You and I mustn't dwell on the grisly. That's why I beg you to swerve your gaze another way instead a moving closer to the … the way you seem to … don't touch that, for you and myself, we are put on earth to light the path a righteousness and obeisance.

Please don't touch the—, ma'am, said the po-lice.

Don't lift that, hey, please, why, said Clough, Mrs. Erwagen, I beseech you.

My innocent curi
o
sity …, said Molly, each syllable dancing on her tongue. I don't know what's gotten into me. I must be light-headed, for I have such an irrepressible urge to view the face a the criminal.

No, lady, you mustn't, said Clough.

My soul compels me not to ignore this terrible opportunity.

Uhh, said the po-lice.

No, I simply must look, she said feverishly, and quickly turned the carpet off the man's head. Oh, she said gazing upon the Chinaman's lifeless features. His lips were a livid purple and his wet tongue could be seen. His neck was soaked in oily blood. His eyes were ash-white, wide and dry.

He's only a child, she said. He can't be more than … yes, I suppose he's my age. Slipping off a glove and touching the dead man's cheek with her bare hand, looking him in the eyes, his paling horizons, and exclaiming in a trembling voice: His skin, he's still warm.

As New Year's celebrations were readied, the lone woodsman Campbell staggered around. In these forests, he was no taller than the ferns. Starlight in the carbon-black sky. Without his bosses Furry & Daggett to break his back, without a female to spend the night with, without the encouragement he hoped to find in the life of a bachelor, a skinful of that mystic moonshine sloshed around in his otherwise empty belly. There in
an unfenced yard owned by a family he knew well enough to respect better, he found what he was looking for, an outhouse. He closed the door behind him, stretched the suspenders down from his shoulders and crumpled his pants around his ankles, then sat on the toilet stool. He picked up some ragged issue of a men's journal he found beside him on the bench, awaiting the chance to relax him, and saw it was legible. He was reading the latest installment of a western serial when with a rusty squeal the door swung wide open and a wild-looking man cried: Holy Jesus, and fell straight back in terror. Campbell leaped up and reeled around inside the outhouse with his pants dragging around his feet: What the—, nearly wedging an arm down the hole before summoning his wits about him.