Or what if we hadn’t made up and decided to go to dinner together? What if he had driven off alone, with his death curse sitting on the seat beside him, waiting to be activated? I would never have known, until after it was too late . . .
Even though my stomach was empty, nausea welled up inside me and I felt like I might be sick.
I started taking slow, even, deep breaths, trying to pull myself together.
Max was chanting in a language I didn’t recognize as he raised the silver vessel over his head. The misfortune cookie sat on the table, inert, ordinary looking . . . and so deadly that I was almost afraid to look at it, now that I had turned it over to Max.
Destroy it, destroy it, destroy it . . .
Lopez’s survival was determined entirely by what happened to this garish little confection. I couldn’t stand the tension.
Max set down the cocktail shaker and stood there for a moment in silence with his head bowed. Then he lifted off the top, carefully picked up the fortune cookie (which was still in its cellophane wrapper), and dropped it into the silver receptacle. He put the lid back on and then stood there staring at the shaker.
“Now what?”
“We wait for the elixir inside the vessel to take effect and—Ah!”
Thick, white, putrid smoke started seeping out from beneath the shaker’s lid.
White, the color of death.
“Max?” I clambered to my feet, prepared to flee.
“Don’t be alarmed,” he said. “This is quite normal.”
“Yeah, right.”
The shaker started trembling, subtly at first, and then with rapidly growing violence, until it was soon shaking as fiercely if rocked by a major earthquake. The sour-smelling white smoke was by now billowing out in roiling clouds, escaping from beneath the vessel’s rattling lid and accompanied by a menacing hissing sound that made my hackles rise. After doing this for what seemed like a long time, but was probably only about thirty seconds, the shaker gave a little hop, landed back on the table with a muffled thud, and went completely still and silent. The smoke that filled the room began dissipating, though it still stank.
As I stared at the quiescent cocktail shaker, I realized I was panting with anxiety. Max’s posture was alert and his expression taut, but he looked focused and intent rather than worried or puzzled.
After a long moment, he reached for the shaker, removed the lid, and pulled a slimy, dripping object out of it. I stared at it for a moment with a frown . . . until I realized what it was.
“The cellophane wrapper?”
He nodded. “The only part of that confection that was neutral rather than evil.”
“Whoa.” I needed to sit down again, but this time I made sure I found a chair first. “Some part of me hoped . . . you know.”
“That this cookie was a merely a harmless treat which you had, in your anxiety, erroneously perceived as a threat?” He showed me the interior of the shaker. Nothing remained but the elixir. The mystical potion had completely eradicated the cookie and the death curse it contained. “That was an understandable hope, Esther. But as you can see . . . the cookie conjuror has tried to kill again.”
“Evil is voracious,” I said, “and feeds on its own appetite.”
“I wish it were not always so,” Max said gravely. “And yet, it always is.”
I pulled out my cell phone, fully focused now on stopping the killer before he took another crack at Lopez—who was probably still in Chinatown right now, a vulnerable target.
Lucky answered his phone by saying, “Hey, kid, I was about to call you. I just found out—”
I interrupted him and cut to the chase. “Uncle Six is the murderer, and he’s trying to kill Detective Lopez.”
“Huh?”
I met Max’s eyes as I gave the old hit man a summary of what had happened tonight, and I concluded, “So the killer must be Uncle Six! Or, at least, he’s the mastermind behind the conjuror.”
“No, we got that one wrong,” said Lucky. “I just found out—”
“Of course it’s Six,” I insisted. “We know he wanted Benny dead. He’s bound to want Lopez dead, too. After all, Lopez is the cop who put his brother in prison three years ago and who’s going back over the case now to make sure his brother stays in prison.”
“It’s a good theory,” said Lucky, “but it don’t work. I just found out—”
“Lucky, the killer just tried to whack Lopez!” I said shrilly. “We’ve got to stop Uncle Six! Now! Tonight!”
“I can tell you’re upset, but you gotta calm down and listen to me,” Lucky said firmly. “Six is dead.”
“We don’t have time to calm down. We have to . . . to . . .” I blinked. “What did you just say?”
“Uncle Six is dead,” Lucky said.
I shot out of my chair. “What?”
“What’s happened?” Max asked, startled into jumping out of his chair, too.
Lucky said, “Joe Ning was found dead today. Sometime after dark. The Chens will be handling the funeral.”
“Uncle Six is dead?” I asked. “You’re sure?”
“He’s dead?” Max asked. “Is there a cookie in the vicinity?”
I said to Lucky, “Max is asking—”
“Yeah, I knew what the doc would ask,” Lucky said. “So I made sure I asked. That’s why it’s taken me time to get word to you. I was finding out—”
“And?” I prodded impatiently.
“Uncle Six received a gourmet fortune cookie a couple of days ago. A gift. His housekeeper thinks there was a card with it, but no one really knows. The old guy was a diabetic, not supposed to touch sweets. But you know, the will is weak . . . So today he cracked it open. Only got to eat about half of it before he died, poor bastard.” After a moment, Lucky added, “I guess no one mentioned to him exactly how Benny died—about two seconds after breakin’ open a fortune cookie just like that one, I mean.”
Who would have mentioned it, after all? The few people who knew about it supposed that that Benny’s own superstitious reaction to the nasty fortune inside the cookie had made him fatally clumsy that day.
“Only you saw the possible significance in what happened to Benny,” I said, recalling that Lucky had exhibited sensitivity on previous occasions too, to mystical danger. “You and Max.”
“How exactly did Mr. Ning die after cracking the cookie?” Max asked.
“Freak accident,” Lucky replied when I relayed that question. “They think he tripped. Maybe had a dizzy spell after eating the cookie—a reaction to the sugar he wasn’t supposed to eat.”
“Tripped where?”
“The balcony of his apartment,” said Lucky. “Fell six stories straight down. Hit the street below with a really messy splat.”
I winced.
“No one else got hurt, though,” Lucky added.
I suddenly realized that’s what had made Danny Teng go ballistic at Yee & Sons earlier tonight. He was receiving news of Uncle Six’s death. And he took it badly. Given the kind of business they were in, he probably assumed Uncle Six had been murdered.
That was the case, of course—but not in a way that Danny could recognize, let alone avenge.
I slumped into my chair, realizing what this meant. “Oh, Lucky, this is awful.”
“Yeah, our killer’s turning up the temperature, and we still gotta find him and take away his rolling pin,” he said. “But don’t shed any tears over Uncle Six, kid. A quick exit kinda goes with the life he chose. And it’s not as if he was a friend of ours.”
“No, I don’t mean Six’s death,” I said. “I mean we’re starting all over now, with a cold engine. We’ve got no idea who’s trying to kill Lopez!”