I edged up to the bar, down at the end where nobody was sitting. The bartender was a youngish guy with a Fu Man-chu mustache; he wore a pink jacket with a dragon embroidered over the pocket. When he got around to me I leaned forward and said, “I’m looking for the China Doll.”
He’d heard that before; one corner of his mouth lifted in a wise smile. Fine. He thought I was just another John and that was what I wanted him to think.
“Not here,” he said.
“She be in later?”
“Maybe. It depends.”
“She’s a regular, though, isn’t she?”
“She drops in most nights.”
“What time, if she’s coming?”
“Around nine. Something to drink while you wait?”
I thought it over. I could hang around here or I could go out hunting for Ming Toy. But there were a lot of flesh spots in Chinatown and in North Beach; I could wander around all night without finding her. And the less I exposed myself to people on Jimmy Quon’s turf, the better off I would be. The smart thing to do was to stay put for an hour or two.
I said, “Bottle of Schlitz. I’ll take it in a booth.”
The booth I claimed was positioned so that you could see the front door from inside it. One of the waitresses brought the beer, gave me a sloe-eyed look, took my money, and went away again. I poured beer and sat nursing it, not thinking about anything, letting the rock music from the juke fill up my head.
And I waited.
Sixteen
The China Doll showed up at twenty minutes past nine.
I was working on my second beer, fighting off impatience, when I saw her come in. Even in the dim pinkish light, I recognized her immediately: tiny, young-looking, wearing a Chinese dress slit to the thigh, the long pigtails Kam Fong had mentioned pulled forward so that they hung over her breasts. The place was crowded now, and she came forward in slow, dainty movements, looking at the faces of the men she passed, like a predator sizing up her prey.
I was out of the booth and moving toward her before she got to the end of the bar. One of the men turned on his stool and said something to her; she stopped to answer him. But when I reached her, coming up close, she turned her head and tilted it back to peer up at me.
She was no more than five feet tall; the top of her head was on a level with my chest. Too much makeup and powder gave her face a whitish cast, and her mouth looked painted on. China Doll, all right. Life-sized doll, soft and cuddly, that would do things the toy manufacturers never dreamed of.
I said, “Ming Toy?”
“Yes?” Sibilant piping voice, as if it were coming out of a box implanted in her throat.
“I’ve got a twenty-dollar bill in my wallet. It’s yours if you sit down and have a drink with me.”
Her gaze slid down my body like a caress, flicked up again to my face; the eyes, under long artificial lashes, were old and wise and black as midnight. The point of her tongue came out and made her painted lips glisten.
The guy at the bar nudged me with one hand. I looked at him, and he said, “Hey, buddy, I saw her first.” I kept on looking at him, not saying anything, until he started to fidget. Then I said, “Drink your drink — buddy,” and he mumbled something and swiveled away from me with his shoulders hunched.
When I looked at Ming Toy again her tongue was still showing between her teeth, like a cat’s. “Twenty dollars,” I said. “For a drink and some conversation. That’s all.”
“I would be honored.”
Yeah, I thought. I took her arm and steered her back to the booth, and we sat down. She folded her hands on the table, watching me as I got the twenty out of my wallet. But I didn’t give it to her, not yet; I folded it in half and put it under my beer glass. “Talk first,” I said. “All right?”
“Yes.”
The waitress came over, took the China Doll’s order for a daiquiri, and went away again. The damned jukebox began to give out with another loud song, all hammering drums and lyrics that sounded like gibberish. I leaned closer to Ming Toy so that my face was only a few inches from hers. The tongue came out again, like an invitation this time; but her eyes were hooded and wary, watching.
I told her my name, my right name. The artificial lashes fluttered once, but that was all; nothing changed in her expression. “You know who I am?” I asked her.
“No,” she said. “We have met before?”
“We haven’t met. But we both know some people.”
“Yes?”
“Yes. A cop named Eberhardt, for one.”
Still no change in her expression. But after a few seconds she nodded and said, “So,” in a different voice, without the whisper of sex in it.
“You know me now?” I said.
“Yes. I think so.”
“Good. What do you know?”
“You the man who was shot. You and the policeman.”
“What else?”
“Nothing else.”
“Then I’ll tell you,” I said. “The man who shot Eberhardt and me is a Chinese named Jimmy Quon. You know who he is, don’t you?”
Her hands moved together on the table; she was nervous now, and there was fear peeking out at the edges of the whore’s mask. “Everyone know Mau Yee,” she said. “But why you come to me? I have nothing to do with him.”
“It’s not Mau Yee I’m interested in right now. It’s the man who hired him, a white man named Carl Emerson.”
She looked away from me, biting her lip. The waitress came back just then, and when she set the daiquiri down Ming Toy caught it up immediately and took an unladylike bite out of it. I got rid of the waitress with some money and bent toward the China Doll again.
I said, “You’ve had dealings with Emerson before,” making it a statement instead of a question.
“I... yes.”
“One of your customers?”
“Yes.”
“One of Polly Soon’s customers?”
“I don’t... why you ask about Polly Soon?”
“You were a friend of hers, weren’t you?”
A convulsive nod. And another bite out of the daiquiri, this time with both hands wrapped around the glass.
“How did she die, Ming Toy?”
“She fell... It was an accident...”
“Was it? How do you know? Were you there when it happened?”
“No,” she said, a little too quickly.
“You live on the same floor at the Ping Yuen project. You sure you weren’t there that night? You sure you didn’t see Polly Soon fall?”
“No!”
“Did Carl Emerson push her off that walkway?”
“I don’t know...”
“But he was with her that night?”
“I didn’t see them. I wasn’t there.”
“Is that what you told Lieutenant Eberhardt?”
“Yes, I...” She blinked. “You know he spoke to me?”
“I do now. What else did you tell him?”
“Nothing. I know nothing about Polly’s death.”
“You must have told him something, given him some kind of lead. Did you mention Emerson’s name?”
“No.”
“Did he mention it?”
“No.”
“Another name, then? Somebody else that he went to see?”
She hesitated. Then she said, “Anna Chu.”
“Who’s Anna Chu?”
“Old woman who lives in the project. She minds the business of others.”
“You think maybe she saw something that night?”
“Maybe yes.”
“Do you know if the lieutenant talked to her?”
“No. Anna Chu and I don’t speak; she don’t like me.”
“What’s her apartment number?”
“Five-eleven. But she won’t be there now.”
“Why not?”
“She... stay late on Tuesday nights. At the temple.”
“What temple?”