“Do you think he has another hatchet?” Penny asked, now peering out the back window anxiously as they drove.
“Of course.” Kim chuckled at her innocence. “Didn’t you notice the laundry bag he was carrying, dear girl?”
“Yes. You mean —”
“Precisely. It was filled with spare hatchets. Which might explain,” Kim added, musing to himself, “why so often one’s shirts are returned from the laundry with the buttons missing.”
“But you still haven’t explained why he wanted to kill you.”
“He was a Tong tool. You see, dear lady, I am the head of the Trotsky Tong in Chinatown.”
“What’s that?”
“It started as a Trotskyite Chinese cell. But we have grown to a full-fledged Tong. The impetus for growth came from the martyrdom of Leon Trotsky in Mexico. You may remember that he is sometimes referred to as ‘the man with the axe in his head in Mexico’. It is commonly thought that he was murdered by agents of Stalin, which is to say agents of that faction of Russian Communism which opposed Trotsky’s faction and drove him out of Russia. But we Chinese know better. It wasn’t an axe, but a hatchet which killed him. And it wasn’t the Russians who arranged his murder, but the Viet Tong, a group financed by the Chinese Reds. So, naturally, the Viet Tong are the mortal enemies of the Trotsky Tong. I, being the commissar of the latter, am frequently the target of their attacks.”
“You mean this has happened before?” Penny was horrified.
“Yes. But lately it has grown worse. You see, the Viet Tong has merged with the Mao Tse Tong under the leadership of one Yegg Foo Dung. This coalition is known in Chinatown as the King Tong. They wage merciless guerilla warfare and are trying to wrest the fortune cookie business from us in an effort to spread their propaganda. Still unable to do that, they have adopted other means, some of them quite spectacular.”
“For instance?” Penny asked.
“Well, just the other day the King Tong guerillas burned a monk in the street to draw attention to their cause.”
“A religious man? How awful!”
“No, you misunderstand. This was an orang-utang. The SPCA was quite upset and is threatening all sorts of retaliation. There was even resentment within their own organization. Fai Rhee, head of the King Tong Woman’s Auxiliary, was particularly upset.”
“I don’t blame her!” Penny said indignantly. “I can’t stand cruelty to animals myself!”
“Then you are on our side. Why, just the other day they slaughtered a dog so that they might have a weapon with which to attempt to garotte me.”
“I don’t understand. What was the weapon?”
“Chow mane.”
“I am a little hungry,” Penny confessed.
“I mean orange dog neck fur,” Kim tried to explain.
“I’ve never tried it. It really doesn’t sound very appetizing. But then Chinese food never does from the name. When I taste one of those dishes, though, I always find that I’m pleasantly surprised.”
“Skip it,” Kim told her, realizing that things had gone beyond explanation.
“Is it like orange duck sauce?”
“Please! Just put it out of your mind! Anyway, we are here,” Kim announced, braking as he pulled the car to the curb of one of the narrow streets of Chinatown.
Penny followed him from the car. She paused on the sidewalk to look curiously at a building across the street. It was a tall, thin edifice of six stories. Two neat, parallel rows of windows ran vertically down its facade. Each window was lit from inside and each framed a different erotic scene. Down one row, starting from the top, the windows featured a large, naked bosom, a vibrating belly, a hand making lewd motions, a beautifully shaped pair of bare legs, pursed, ruby-red lips sucking insinuatingly, and a plump plum of a derriere enhanced by the sheerest of harem pants and wriggling provocatively. The second row of windows featured a longer view of things. It presented such sights as a girl dressed in black stockings and leather jacket wielding a strip-teaser doing a bump-and-grind on a runway, a tethered sheep bumping its rump against a pair of hip-boots, a masseuse wielding a vibrator over a massage table, an obscene tableau of dancing nymphets framed by a series of stills from old Errol Flynn films, and a movie screen over which flashed a series of pornographic movie sequences. Atop the first row of windows, on the roof, a giant electric sign flashed the letter “A”. Over the second row a matching sign flashed “B”.
“What sort of place is that?” Penny asked naively.
“A Chinese house of ill repute,” Kim Asutra explained. “When we get rid of the imperialist capitalist system, such decadent establishments will be the first to go.”
“But then you’ll put all those poor girls out of work,” Penny objected.
“Every revolution has its human sacrifices. Why should the Chinese Communist revolution be different?”
“Are there many Chinese Communists?” Penny asked as she followed Kim Asutra into his house.
“In China everybody is a Communist. Unless they are dead, of course, which is the inevitable fate of those who are not Communists.”
“I didn’t mean in China. I meant here. In the United States. In New York. Here, in Chinatown.”
“No. Not many here are Communists,” Kim admitted reluctantly. “They have been duped into the capitalist system. All they care about is their laundries and their restaurants and sending their sons to Harvard. But that’s all right! In the end we will bury them!” He took off his shoes as he entered the house and pounded one of them on a table in the foyer to drive home his point. “And it is we Trotskyites who will lead the way to the workers’ Paradise,” he added, still shouting.
“But if you bury them all, where will you get more Chinese Communists from ?” Penny asked innocently.
“Ahh, will you Westerners never come to understand our Oriental philosophy?” Kim sighed. “But no matter. For now, let us concentrate on more immediate concerns. First some garments for you, then some food at my humble table, and then —”
“And then?”
Kim gazed at the twin mounds of flesh peeping out from below the hem of the mink jacket Penny wore. “The end,” he said not too cryptically, but quite hungrily and quite communistically, “justifies the means.”
He clapped his hands. A servant appeared. Kim instructed him to bring Penny something to wear. A few moment later the servant returned with an embroidered silk kimono. Penny turned her back, slipped out of the mink and into the garment.
“Ah, yes,” Kim repeated, catching a glimpse of the lush bottom revealed in the process, “the end justifies the means.” He led Penny into a small dining room. When they were seated, he spoke quite loudly: “Shrimp!”
“Oh, yes!” Penny clapped her hands. “In lobster sauce. Mmmm. It’s practically my favorite Chinese dish.”
“No. No,” Kim told her. “Your capacity for misunderstanding is truly superb. It is only exceeded by your beauty. ‘Shrimp’ is the servant here. We call him that because he is rather small in stature. Ahh, here he is.” A short Chinese man entered and Kim rattled off some orders to him that sounded rather like the dialogue from an old war movie—the sort of thing the Japanese warlord shouts just before the brave American pilot is tortured to death because he will only reveal his name and rank, but is unable to remember his serial number. “I have taken the liberty of ordering our repast,” Kim told Penny.
“I’m sure it will be delicious,” she said politely. “And I think your man ‘Shrimp’ is cute as a bug,” she added. “Where did you ever find him?”
“He comes from Florida. One of the keys. I think it was called Luke. He was sort of beachcombing there when I met him. You see, he used to play Number One Son in the Charlie Chan movies until he outgrew the part. Then he went to Florida to try to forget how fleeting is such glory. Actually, he isn’t too efficient a servant. I really keep him around more for nostalgic reasons. But I much preferred his predeccessor.”