“The temple of Tien Hou. She’s one of the caretakers.”
I had heard of the Tien Hou Temple; it was one of Chinatown’s fixtures, and there had been a feature article on it in the Sunday papers some time back. Tien Hou was a Chinese goddess, queen of heaven and the sea, protector of sailors, traveling actors, and prostitutes. Yeah, I thought, prostitutes. Tien Hou must have been looking the other way the night Polly Soon died.
I said, “It’s on Waverly Place, isn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“And Anna Chu will be there now?”
“Until midnight. Every Tuesday.”
I took the twenty out from under my glass, held it up in front of her. She made a grab for it. I let her get her fingers on the bill, but I hung onto it. “Is there anything else you told the lieutenant? Any other name you gave him?”
“No.”
“You’d better be sure,” I said. “If I find out different, I’ll be back for another talk. You understand?”
“I have told you everything.”
I let go of the twenty. She stuffed it inside the bead purse she was carrying, slid out of the booth in hurried movements; she wasn’t looking at me anymore. I got out right after her, saw her move toward the rear of the room, saw a guy at one of the tables paw at her as she passed and Ming Toy swat his hand away. Then she was gone and so was I, on my way to find Anna Chu.
The two-block length of Waverly Place was shrouded in fog so dense you could not see more than fifty yards in either direction. What few pedestrians there were appeared and disappeared like wraiths; street lamps and neon signs seemed to hang suspended in midair, and the buildings — joss houses, darkened shops, restaurants, the headquarters of several tongs and fraternal organizations — had an insubstantial, two-dimensional look, as if they were adrift in the swirling grayness. It was the kind of night that works on your imagination, gives you the feeling that you’re surrounded by menace.
The building that housed the Tien Hou Temple was in the block between Clay and Washington. Narrow, four-storied, with ornate balconies on the upper two floors, its pagoda cornices hidden in the mist. The lower floors were dark, but I could make out faint, diffused bars of light coming through shutters beyond the top-floor balcony. A pair of bright yellow signs with red lettering in both English and Chinese, one above the glass entrance door and one attached to it, said that the temple could be found within. The door itself was unlocked.
Inside was a staircase, not very well lighted, and nothing else. On the second-floor landing there was a heavily barred door with some sort of insignia on it that I didn’t bother to look at, and on the third floor I passed another door, this one unbarred, marked with Chinese characters. I kept climbing, panting a little with the exertion, and when the stairs made a circular turning I was looking at an iron gate that blocked off access at the top. An old-fashioned doorbell had been installed in the wall near it, and below that was a hand-lettered sign that said Tien Hou was the oldest Chinese temple in America and asked for donations to keep it operating.
I pushed the bell button, but nothing happened inside. I did not even hear it ring; the only sound to hear anywhere in the building was the rasp of my own breathing. Maybe the thing doesn’t work, I thought. I put the tips of my fingers against the gate and gave it a tentative push, the way you do, and it swung inward; the gate hadn’t been shut far enough to secure the latch. I went in through it, eased it closed behind me.
“Hello? Anna Chu?”
No answer.
I was in a partitioned alcove full of tables and boxes and folding chairs, a kind of storage area. The temple was on my left; reddish light glowed in there. I could see the closed louvered doors to the balcony, a recessed side altar made of red-painted wood with some sort of statue inside it. The pungent odor of incense was strong in the air, and stronger still when I entered the temple proper.
It was some place. The long side wall facing me was lined with altars, statues, teak tables and other pieces of furniture, nearly all of them in red and gold. A massive scrolled wood carving, covered in gold leaf, stretched the width of the room overhead; the rest of the ceiling was taken up with dozens of hanging lanterns in pink and green, red and gold. A long table draped in white cloth and stacked with paper-craft was set along the near wall. At the upper end were a pair of great carved altars, one that took up the entire back wall and another, with a red prayer bench fronting it, set apart in the middle of the floor. Both of these, and the smaller altars on the far side, were arranged with embroidered cloths, bowls of oranges and apples, potted crysanthemums, joss urns, red-hued electric candles, and other things I could not identify.
There was no sign of anybody in the room. I called Anna Chu’s name again, still didn’t get an answer, and moved ahead toward the main altars. To my left, beyond the white-draped table, was a short ell containing a bench for the storage of incense and a red-painted platform that supported an ancient drum and a heavy iron temple bell. When I got to where I could see the floor next to the platform I came to an abrupt standstill. The hackles went up on my neck; without thinking about it, I yanked the .38 out of my coat pocket and held it upraised in my hand.
Somebody was lying over there, face down, legs and arms outflung. But it wasn’t Anna Chu because it wasn’t a woman. Alongside the sprawled form was an ornamental altar standard, like a spear or a pikestaff, that had come out of a row of similar standards on the wall behind the altar; part of the bronze symbol decorating its head was clotted with blood. So was the back of the man’s skull — what was left of it. He had to have been struck down with savage force to cause that much damage.
My stomach kicked over a couple of times, pumped the taste of bile into my throat. I went over to him, around next to the temple bell. I was pretty sure I knew who he was even before I did that, but seeing his face gave me an even greater feeling of incredulity. He shouldn’t have been here and he shouldn’t have been dead, and I could not put the two facts together so that they made any kind of sense. I just kept standing there, confused, smelling the incense and fighting off nausea, staring down at the body in the dim ruby light from the lanterns and the electric candles.
The dead man was Jimmy Quon.
Seventeen
It was at least fifteen seconds before I could make myself move again. Then I set my teeth and knelt beside the body, not looking at his face anymore. His expression was the stuff of nightmares: yellowish eyes open and bulging like a frog’s; effeminate mouth twisted into a rictus, shiny with blood, so that it looked as though he was grinning.
He was wearing the brown leather jacket Kam Fong had told me about; I bunched it up away from his waist. There was no sign of the .357 Magnum or of any other weapon. If he always went armed, then whoever had killed him must have taken his puppy. Why?
Why any of this?
I laid the .38 on the floor, got out my handkerchief, and went through the jacket pockets. Pack of cigarettes, half of which were hand-rolled marijuana joints, some matches, and nothing else. Nothing in his Levi’s except half a roll of Velamints, a ring of keys, and a wallet. I used the handkerchief to slide the wallet out. Close to a hundred dollars in cash, a driver’s license, a couple of cards embossed with Chinese characters that were probably organizational membership cards, and a tattered, palm-sized address book. The book told me nothing; all the entries were in Chinese.
I put the wallet back into his pocket, caught up the .38, and shoved to my feet. The temple had become oppressive — too quiet, too red, heavy with a sense of desecration. And the incense, the faint underlying odor of death, was making me gag. Get out of here, I thought; you can’t think in here. And you don’t want to be around if anybody else shows up.