There was a young Chinese man dressed in hip-hop wear who looked at Charlie and took a quick step to the side so as not to catch whatever kind of crazy this well-dressed Lo pak[1] was carrying. Charlie tapped his ear and said, “Sorry, wireless headset.”
The hip-hop guy nodded curtly, like he knew that, and despite appearances to the contrary, he had not been trippin’, but had, in fact, been chillin’ like a mo-fuckin’ villain, so step the fuck off, wigga. He crossed against the light, limping slightly under the weight of the subtext.
Charlie entered Golden Dragon Cleaners and the man at the counter, Mr. Hu, whom Charlie had known since he was eight, greeted him with an expansive and warm twitch of the left eyebrow, which was his usual greeting, and a good indicator to Charlie that the old man was still alive. A cigarette streamed at the end of a long black holder clinched in Hu’s dentures.
“Good morning, Mr. Hu,” Charlie said. “Beautiful day, isn’t it?”
“Suit?” said Mr. Hu, looking at the suit Charlie had slung over his shoulder.
“Yes, just the one today,” Charlie said. Charlie brought all of his finer merchandise to Golden Dragon to be cleaned, and he’d been giving them a lot of business the last few months, with all the estate clothes he’d been taking in. He also had them do his alterations, and Mr. Hu was considered to be the best three-fingered tailor on the West Coast, and perhaps, the world. Three Fingered Hu, he was known as in Chinatown, although to be fair, he was actually possessed of eight fingers, and was only missing the two smaller fingers from his right hand.
“Tailor?” Hu asked.
“No, thank you,” Charlie said. “This one’s for resale, not for me.”
Hu snatched the suit out of Charlie’s hand, tagged it, then called, “One suit for the White Devil!” in Mandarin, and one of his granddaughters came speeding out of the back, grabbed the suit, and was gone through the curtain before Charlie could see her face. “One suit for the White Devil,” she repeated for someone in the back.
“Wednesday,” said Three Fingered Hu. He handed Charlie the ticket.
“There’s something else,” Charlie said.
“Okay, Tuesday,” said Hu, “but no discount.”
“No, Mr. Hu, I know it’s been a long time since I needed it, but I wonder if you still have your other business?”
Mr. Hu closed one eye and looked at Charlie for a full minute before he replied. When he did, he said, “Come,” then disappeared behind the curtain leaving a cloud of cigarette smoke.
Charlie followed him into the back, through a noisy, steaming hell of cleaning fluids, mangle irons, and a dozen scurrying employees to a tiny plywood-walled office in the back, where Hu closed the door and locked them in as they did their business, something they’d first done over twenty years ago.
The first time Three Fingered Hu had led Charlie Asher through the stygian back room of Golden Dragon Cleaners, the ten-year-old Beta Male was sure that he was going to be kidnapped and sold into dry-cleaning slavery, butchered and turned into dim sum, or forced to smoke opium and fight fifty kung fu fighters at once while still in his pj’s (Charlie had a very tenuous grasp of his neighbors’ culture at age ten), but despite his fear, he was driven by a passion that had been embedded in his very genes millions of years ago: a quest for fire. Yes, it was a crafty Beta Male who first discovered fire, and true, it was almost immediately taken away from him by an Alpha Male. (Alphas missed out on the discovery of fire, but because they did not understand about grabbing the hot, orangey end of the stick, they are credited with inventing the third-degree burn.) Still, the original spark burns bright in every Beta’s veins. When Alpha boys have long since moved on to girls and sports, Betas will still be pursuing pyrotechnics well into adolescence and sometimes beyond. Alpha Males may lead the armies of the world, but it’s the Betas who actually get the shit blowed up.
And what better testimonial for a purveyor of fireworks than to be missing critical digits? Three Fingered Hu. When Hu opened his thick, trifold case across the desk, revealing his wares, young Charlie felt he had passed through the fires of hell to arrive, at last, in paradise, and he gladly handed over his wad of crumpled, sweaty dollar bills. And even as long silver ashes from Hu’s cigarette fell over the fuses like deadly snow, Charlie picked his pleasure. He was so excited he nearly peed himself.
The death-dealing Charlie who walked out of Golden Dragon Cleaners that morning with a compact paper parcel tucked under his arm felt a similar excitement, for as much as it was against his nature, he was rushing, once again, into the breech. He headed to the storm sewer grate and, waving the glowing porcelain bear from his satchel at the street, shouted, “I’m going over one block and up four, bitches. Join me?”
“The White Devil has finally gone around the bend,” said Three Fingered Hu’s eleventh grandchild, Cindy Lou Hu, who stood at the counter next to her venerated and digitally challenged ancestor.
“His money not crazy,” said Three.
Charlie had noticed the alley on one of his walks to the financial district. It lay between Montgomery and Kearney Streets and had all the things a good alley should have: fire escapes, Dumpsters, various steel doors tagged with graffiti, a rat, two seagulls, assorted filth, a guy passed out under some cardboard, and a half-dozen “No Parking” signs, three with bullet holes. It was the Platonic ideal of an alley, but what distinguished it from other alleys in the area was that it had two openings into the storm-drain system, spaced not fifty yards apart, one on the street end and one in the middle, concealed between two Dumpsters. Having recently developed an eye for storm drains, Charlie couldn’t help but notice.
He chose the drain that was hidden from the street, crouched down about four feet away, and opened the parcel from Three Fingered Hu. He removed eight M-80s and trimmed the two-inch-long waterproof fuses to about a half inch with a pair of nail clippers he kept on his key chain. (An M-80 is a very large firecracker, purported to have the explosive power of a quarter of a stick of dynamite. Rural children use them to blow up mailboxes or school plumbing, but in the city they have largely been replaced by the 9 mm Glock pistol as the preferred instrument of mischievous fun.)
“Kids!” Charlie called into the drain. “You with me? Sorry I didn’t get your names.” He drew the sword from his cane, set it by his knee, then dug the porcelain bear out of his satchel and sat it by his other knee. “There you go,” he called.
There was a vicious hiss from the drain, and even as he thought it was completely dark, it got even darker. He could see silver disk shapes moving in the blackness, like coins tumbling through a dark ocean, but these were paired up—eyes.
“Give it, Meat. Give it,” whispered a female voice.
“Come and get it,” Charlie said, trying to fight down the greatest case of the willies he’d ever felt. It was like dry ice was being applied to his spine and it was all he could do not to shiver.
The shadow in the drain started to leak out across the pavement, just an inch or so, but he could see it, like the light had changed. But it hadn’t. The shadow took the shape of a female hand and moved another six inches toward the glowing bear. That’s when Charlie grabbed the sword and snapped it down on the shadow. It didn’t hit pavement, but connected with something softer, and there was a deafening screech.
“You piece of shit!” screamed the voice—now in anger, not pain. “You worthless little—you—”
“Quick and the dead, ladies,” Charlie said. “Quick and the dead. C’mon, give it another shot.”
A second hand-shaped shadow snaked out of the drain on the left, then another on the right. Charlie pushed the bear away from the drain as he pulled the cigar lighter from his pocket. He lit the short fuses of four of the M-80s and tossed them into the drain, even as the shadows were reaching out.