Apparently satisfied that the danger was over, he breathed a little sigh of relief. Then he met my eyes and said with certainty, “Mystical.”
I nodded. “Evil.”
10
Bo
When things fall apart or deteriorate; when incompetent people gain power and make a situation worse.
It took a few days, but I finally found a good excuse to call Lopez. So good, in fact, that I’d probably have phoned him even if I hadn’t promised Lucky I’d try to find out why Lopez was investigating in Chinatown.
Shivering inside my heavy coat as the wind whipped down the street on a bleak January day, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Lopez’s cell. (None of my vows to get over him had led me to delete his number.)
He answered on the third ring. “Esther?”
“Yeah, it’s me,” I said as another gust of icy wind blew down Doyers, the little L-shaped street in Chinatown that runs between Pell Street and the Bowery.
“Are you all right?” he asked. “You sound funny.”
“I’m just cold.” I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. Under my heavy coat, I wasn’t dressed for this weather.
“Where are you?”
“Chinatown.”
“Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Me, too. I’m working on a case here.”
“Really?” I said, as if also surprised by our proximity. “Oh, good!”
In fact, I had assumed Lucky would be right about that. He hadn’t survived all these years in his line of work by relying on bad information.
“Good?” Lopez repeated. “Does that mean you’re speaking to me?”
“Do you have to start right off with trick questions?” I said crankily.
“Sorry. I mean, no. I mean, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you called.”
“Oh, really?” I hadn’t intended to be snippy with him, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.
I was standing outside of a well-known little eatery. Ted Yee was inside with the cast and crew of ABC. I looked through the restaurant’s big storefront window and waved to Officer Novak, the uniformed cop who was with them. Then I pointed to my phone and nodded, to let him know I had succeeded in contacting the detective I had told him I was going to call.
“Yes, really.” Lopez took a breath. “Look, can we talk? And I don’t mean that as a trick question.”
I turned my back to the restaurant so that Novak and my colleagues, if they were watching, wouldn’t see me scowling.
“If you wanted to talk,” I said, feeling incensed with Lopez all over again, “you could have called me.”
I was already way off script here, and I was kicking myself for it. But, well, he had that effect on me.
“I know, but when I put you in the squad car that night . . . morning . . . whatever . . . Well, when I said I’d call, you got so mad, I wasn’t sure I should call after that.”
“I got mad because—”
“And,” he continued, raising his voice, “it’s not as if talking was going all that well between us that night . . .” After listening to my stony silence for a long moment, he added, “Or right now.”
I sighed. “All right, look, I don’t want to talk about any of that right now.”
“Okay,” he said quickly.
His prompt agreement to drop the subject of his transgressions made me mad again. “What do you mean, okay?”
“Huh? You just said—”
“Oh, never mind,” I interrupted, in no mood to hear a reasonable rebuttal. I took a deep breath, refocused, and plunged in. “I’m calling you because I need your help. And you always . . . Well, you . . .” He had told me on several occasions, including the time he broke up with me, that he wanted me to call him if I ever needed his help. But although I had intended to remind him of that, I now found that the words stuck in my throat. Or formed a lump there. Or something. I gave myself a shake, gritted my teeth against the bone-numbing cold that was whipping down the street, and concluded lamely, “Look, I just need your help. So can you come here?”
“Yes. Do you need me there right now?”
In the background, I heard a man say irritably to him, “Now? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”
So I said, “No, I guess not.” I didn’t want Lopez to drop everything, rush over here, and then be annoyed with me when he discovered that my problem wasn’t exactly a life-or-death situation. I wanted him to help me, after all. “Will what you’re doing right now take very long?”
“Hang on a second, Esther.” I could hear him conferring with someone, though I didn’t catch what the two of them were saying. Then he said to me, “I can be there within an hour. Is that all right?”
“That should be fine.” I hoped I was right.
“Where exactly are you?” he asked briskly.
“Doyers Street.” I gave him the name of the popular eatery where I’d be waiting.
“Sure, I know that place,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”
“Okay. Good.” After a moment, I added, “Thanks.”
After we ended the call, I put my phone back in my pocket and stomped my chilled feet as I looked down Doyers, one of the oldest streets in the neighborhood, wondering which direction Lopez would come from. In traditional Chinese folklore, ghosts and spirits could only travel in straight lines, so local merchants had built this street to be crooked in order to keep out evil spirits. Or, at least, that was the story that Brian, the protagonist of ABC, was supposed to tell my character, Alicia, as we strolled down Doyers Street together today.
Being a cop rather than a filmmaker, Lopez would probably be more familiar with the street’s criminal associations. The little L-shaped street was sometimes known as the Bloody Angle because of all the gang wars and murders that had taken place here over the years. But that wasn’t in Ted’s script, which took a decidedly romantic view of Chinatown.
Even with the heavy lacquer of industrial-strength hairspray holding my ’do in place and my hood pulled up to protect it, the wind out here was messing up my hair. I also felt my nose running and my eyes starting to water from the cold. John wasn’t around to fix my hair and makeup, so I decided I’d better go inside before I got any more disheveled—even though we obviously wouldn’t be doing any more filming for a few hours.
I opened the door of the restaurant and went inside, giving a sigh of relief as I entered the warm building. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but the place was already so crowded that the noise level meant I’d had to step outside to phone Lopez. And considering the way our conversation had gone, I’d certainly been right not to sit in here, shouting over the phone to him while surrounded by my curious ABC colleagues.
“Is your friend coming?” asked Bill Wu as I sat down again at our table. He played Brian, my boyfriend in the film.
I nodded. Then I added to the cop hovering near us, “Detective Lopez will be here within an hour.”
“An hour?” Officer Novak repeated in dismay.
“I’m sorry.” Fudging a little, I said, “He’s in the middle of a big Chinatown investigation. It’s the soonest he can get here.”