36
Bound Feet, Natural Feet
Sam Spade was on his way out the door at 7 in the morning when his phone rang. He went back inside to pick it up and answered it standing. Effie Perine sounded sleepy but smug.
“The Angel Island is leaving for the immigration station from the Nippon Yusen Kaisha Line Pier Twenty-four at eight thirty. Ray Chong Fat has fixed it so they’ll think you’re a customs official named Nick Charles who needs a translator.”
“Thanks, sweetheart. I’ll bring a bulging briefcase and try to look official.”
Spade changed into a heavy coat and pulled on a woolen knit cap. Twenty minutes later he was walking onto Pier 24 at the foot of Harrison.
Two dozen Japanese men and women were boarding the 144-foot steamer. Spade towered over most of them by nearly a foot. At the head of the gangplank an officious man with a clipboard singled him out.
“State your name and business.”
“Nick Charles,” said Spade. “Special customs agent to—”
“Oh, sure.” The man made a check beside an item on his clipboard. “A translator named Ray Chong Fat will be waiting for you at the immigration station.”
It was a short trip; Angel Island lies in Richardson Bay between Tiburon and San Francisco, an irregular rocky oval covered with trees and vegetation and rimmed with pale sandy beaches. Spade stood at the railing, rolling and smoking cigarettes and watching the island materialize out of the fog.
After the luggage was stored in the shed at the end of the long curving immigration pier at China Cove, the passengers trooped toward the administration building, set back and up from the beach. A slender black-haired dish-faced Chinese man Effie Perine’s age fell into step with Spade.
“Mr. Charles? Ray Chong Fat. I hope I can translate those documents for you.” He lowered his voice. “You’re helping a paper daughter named Mai-lin Choi who passed through here?”
“If she did.”
“She did. I was the translator at her interrogations.”
The immigration station was a vast complex of fifty buildings, dominated by a sprawling two-story administration building, with tan walls and a peaked tile roof. Farther up the slope were the detention barracks, the power plant, and the hospital.
The day was gray, blustering, the fog still swirling, the wind off the bay stabbing at their backs as they walked. As they mounted the steps of the administration building, Chong Fat shivered in his skimpy Immigration Service uniform and said abruptly, “Thirty percent of all Chinese immigrants are deported without ever setting foot in America.”
“So seventy percent make it in. Not bad odds.”
The administration building smelled of damp paper and stale coffee and disinfectant. It was cold and echoing, with linoleum-covered floors and rows of tiny cubicles. In one, a dull-eyed emaciated Chinese youth in a rumpled jacket and unmatched pants was sitting in a hard-backed chair at a glass-topped table. Across from him were two middle-aged Americans in dark suits and ties, one balding with glasses, the other black haired with a small precise mustache. No one was speaking.
Chong Fat led Spade up creaking wooden stairs to a small office on the second floor. He sat down behind the desk while Spade drew up a chair across from him. Chong Fat gestured at Spade’s briefcase, spoke almost in a whisper.
“You brought papers to spread across the desk?”
“Sure. Did you find any record of the Reverend Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy ever passing through?”
“No record,” said Chong Fat, still low voiced.
He opened the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a folder, took out a bulky transcript marked “Mai-lin Choi.” As Spade half-hid it among his jumble of meaningless papers on the desk, he said loudly, “I hope you can translate this for me.”
Spade started reading the transcript, making squiggles on a pad to make it look like he was taking notes as Chong Fat talked in a high, hesitant voice to sound like he was translating into English the characters he was reading in Chinese.
Spade read:
How many steps are there to the front door of your house?
Three.
Who lives opposite your house?
Chin Doo-yik. He lives with his wife.
Describe his wife.
Ng Chee, natural feet.
Didn’t that man have children?
No.
How many houses in your row?
Four.
Who lives in the third house in the second row of houses?
Leong Yik-gai.
What clan does he belong to?
I never heard his family name.
Do you expect us to believe you lived in that village and don’t know the clan names of the other people living there?
Not Leong Yik-gai’s. He never told anyone his family name. He is always away somewhere. He has a wife, one son, and a daughter living in that house.
Describe his wife.
Woo Fong. Bound feet.
Spade finished, slid the transcript back to Chong Fat, who returned it to its folder and quickly put it back in the drawer.
“Thank you very much, Mr. Chong Fat,” said Spade in a loud, hearty voice, gathering up his meaningless papers. “You have saved the Customs Service a week of hard work.”
When Spade entered the office, Effie Perine was still there even though it was well after 6 o’clock. She was all business. “Mai-lin and Reverend Zhu will meet you at St. John’s Methodist Church, Washington and Stockton, tomorrow at one p.m.”
“Good. Those interrogations out on Angel Island are mainly nonsense — who lived in the fourth house in your row, did his wife have bound feet or natural feet?”
“They weren’t able to trap her or confuse her?”
“They never came close. She’s smart and quick-witted enough to be Sun Yat-sen’s daughter. Everything she told us checks out. We can’t say the same for Zhu. No record.”
“You said clergymen come and go as they like.”
“He still would have had to pass through Immigration and Customs. So he either got here illegally or was born here. When Miles comes in tomorrow, tell him to meet me at the Green Street warehouse at midnight. Tonight, grab your coat, I’ll buy you dinner at Julius Castle. Anything you want on the menu.”
37
Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu
Spade climbed up Washington from Grant Avenue to Stockton Street on the upper edge of Chinatown. Late-fall sunshine flooded the street. St. John’s Methodist Church was sheathed in shingles, topped with a witch-hat shingle tower. Mai-lin Choi and a slender, slightly stooped whipcord man wearing a minister’s dark suit awaited Spade between carved ornamental wooden gates.
“Mr. Spade,” said Mai-lin formally, “this is the Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy. Reverend Zhu, Mr. Samuel Spade.”
They shook hands. Zhu’s long fingers were bony but strong. His mixed blood was most apparent in his shiny black hair and in the hint of a slant in dark eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. He peered at Spade for a long, intent moment.
“I recommended you to Miss Choi for your competence as a detective, not for your truthfulness or sense of honor.”
“Yeah. Well, thanks.” Spade gestured at the little church behind them. “You’re the pastor here?”
“Oh, no, assistant pastor only. And only very recently that. I chose it as our meeting place because it is here that I first heard Sun Yat-sen speak.”
Mai-lin gave a visible start. “You met my father?”
“Only heard him speak. It was enough. Let us go inside.”
Light from the tall windows flooded the interior. At the front were the pulpit, the organ, and two tiers of risers for the choir at Sunday services. Pastor Zhu gestured Mai-lin into a pew halfway up the broad central aisle, slid in beside her. Spade stood in the aisle facing them, his back to the altar, one hand resting on the back of the pew ahead of theirs.