Sure, it wasn’t every day I blundered into the immediate aftermath of this sort of foul play, but I was plenty savvy enough; I knew better than to answer that call. It didn’t much matter who was on the other end of the line. If I answered, I could be placed at the scene of a murder only minutes after it had gone down. The phone rang a second time, and a third, and I glanced at the dead man in the chair. The crimson halo surrounding the switchblade’s inlaid mother-of-pearl handle was still spreading, blossoming like some grim rose, and now there was blood dripping to the floor, as well. The phone rang a fourth time. A fifth. And then I was seized by an overwhelming compulsion to answer it, and answer it I did. I wasn’t the least bit thrown that the voice coming through the receiver was Ellen Andrews’s. All at once, the pieces were falling into place. You spend enough years doing the step-and-fetch-it routine for imps like Harpootlian, you find yourself ever more jaded at the inexplicable and the uncanny.
“Beaumont,” she said, “I didn’t think you were going to pick up.”
“I wasn’t. Funny thing how I did anyway.”
“Funny thing,” she said, and I heard her light a cigarette and realized my hands were shaking.
“See, I’m thinking maybe I had a little push,” I said. “That about the size of it?”
“Wouldn’t have been necessary if you’d have just answered the damn phone in the first place.”
“You already know Fong’s dead, don’t you?” And, I swear to fuck, nothing makes me feel like more of a jackass than asking questions I know the answers to.
“Don’t you worry about Fong. I’m sure he had all his ducks in a row and was right as rain with Buddha. I need you to pay attention—”
“Harpootlian had him killed, didn’t she? And you knew he’d be dead when I showed up.”
She didn’t reply straight away, and I thought I could hear a radio playing in the background. “You knew,” I said again, only this time it wasn’t a query.
“Listen,” she said. “You’re a courier. I was told you’re a courier we can trust, elsewise I never would have handed you this job.”
“You didn’t hand me the job. Your boss did.”
“You’re splitting hairs, Miss Beaumont.”
“Yeah, well, there’s a fucking dead celestial in the room with me. It’s giving me the fidgets.”
“So how about you shut up and listen, and I’ll have you out of there in a jiffy.” And that’s what I did—I shut up, either because I knew it was the path of least resistance, or because whatever spell she’d used to persuade me to answer the phone was still working.
“On Fong’s desk, there’s a funny little porcelain statue of a cat.”
“You mean the maneki neko?”
“If that’s what it’s called, that’s what I mean. Now, break it open. There’s a key inside.”
I tried not to, just to see if I was being played as badly as I suspected I was being played. I gritted my teeth, dug in my heels, and tried hard not to break that damned cat.
“You’re wasting time. Auntie H. didn’t mention you were such a crybaby.”
“Auntie H. and I have an agreement when it comes to free will. To my free will.”
“Break the goddamn cat,” Ellen Andrews growled, and that’s exactly what I did. In fact, I slammed it down directly on top of Fong’s head. Bits of brightly painted porcelain flew everywhere, and a rusty barrel key tumbled out and landed at my feet. “Now pick it up,” she said. “The key fits the bottom left-hand drawer of Fong’s desk. Open it.”
This time, I didn’t even try to resist her. I was getting a headache from the last futile attempt. I unlocked the drawer and pulled it open. Inside, there was nothing but the yellowed sheet of newspaper lining the drawer, three golf balls, a couple of old racing forms, and a finely carved wooden box lacquered almost the same shade of red as Jimmy Fong’s blood. I didn’t need to be told I’d been sent to retrieve the box—or, more specifically, whatever was inside the box.
“Yeah, I got it,” I told Ellen Andrews.
“Good girl. Now, you have maybe twelve minutes before the cops show. Go out the same way you came in.” Then she gave me a Riverside Drive address, and said there’d be a car waiting for me at the corner of Canal and Mulberry, a green Chevrolet coupe. “Just give the driver that address. He’ll see you get where you’re going.”
“Yeah,” I said, sliding the desk drawer shut again and locking it. I pocketed the key. “But, sister, you and me are gonna have a talk.”
“Wouldn’t miss it for the world, Nat,” she said and hung up. I shut my eyes, wondering if I really had twelve minutes before the bulls arrived, and if they were even on their way, wondering what would happen if I endeavored not to make the rendezvous with the green coupe. I stood there, trying to decide whether Harpootlian would have gone back on her word and given this bitch permission to turn her hoodoo tricks on me, and if aspirin would do anything at all for the dull throb behind my eyes. Then I looked at Fong one last time, at the knife jutting out of his back, his thin gray hair powdered with porcelain dust from the shattered “lucky cat.” And then I stopped asking questions and did as I’d been told.
The car was there, just like she’d told me it would be. There was a young colored man behind the wheel, and when I climbed in the back, he asked me where we were headed.
“I’m guessing Hell,” I said, “sooner or later.”
“Got that right,” he laughed and winked at me from the rearview mirror. “But I was thinking more in terms of the immediate here and now.”
So I recited the address I’d been given over the phone, 435 Riverside.
“That’s the Colosseum,” he said.
“It is if you say so,” I replied. “Just get me there.”
The driver nodded and pulled away from the curb. As he navigated the slick, wet streets, I sat listening to the rain against the Chevy’s hardtop and the music coming from the Motorola. In particular, I can remember hearing the Dorsey Brothers, “Chasing Shadows.” I suppose you’d call that a harbinger, if you go in for that sort of thing. Me, I do my best not to. In this business, you start jumping at everything that might be an omen or a portent, you end up doing nothing else. Ironically, rubbing shoulders with the supernatural has made me a great believer in coincidence.
Anyway, the driver drove, the radio played, and I sat staring at the red lacquered box I’d stolen from a dead man’s locked desk drawer. I thought it might be mahogany, but it was impossible to be sure, what with all that cinnabar-tinted varnish. I know enough about Chinese mythology that I recognized the strange creature carved into the top—a qilin, a stout, antlered beast with cloven hooves, the scales of a dragon, and a long leonine tail. Much of its body was wreathed in flame, and its gaping jaws revealed teeth like daggers. For the Chinese, the qilin is a harbinger of good fortune, though it certainly hadn’t worked out that way for Jimmy Fong. The box was heavier than it looked, most likely because of whatever was stashed inside. There was no latch, and as I examined it more closely, I realized there was no sign whatsoever of hinges or even a seam to indicate it actually had a lid.
“Unless I got it backwards,” the driver said, “Miss Andrews didn’t say nothing about trying to open that box, now did she?”