Hot Poppies (35 page)

Holding the baby, Dawn looked around. He would kill her if she tried to leave. Leaning his elbows on the table, Pete flicked the collar of his white shirt nervously. He ran his hand through his hair, lit a cigarette, tossed it into the cheap tin ashtray. He took a handkerchief out of his pocket and wiped his glasses on it. He was jumpy; Dawn made him jumpy.

I looked at the window. It was small and there were bars on it. Beyond it was the highway and the border guards. Pete didn't miss a thing, neither would his thugs.

“What about the illegals? What about the illegals your people ship to New York? The people they extort,” I said.

“You think it's better to spend the rest of your life in a shitty village with no work, no hope, no money? They know the risk. It costs. It always costs to get to America. They call it the Golden Mountain.”

“And the murders?”

“Perhaps someone forgot to pay. If they don't pay, well, a deal's a deal, or so I'm told.”

“And the sweatshops?”

“It's a business. We're not talking
Schindler's List
here.”

“How come you're telling me all this?”

“Why not? No one's going anywhere tonight.” His laugh was corrosive. “Maybe not tomorrow either.”

“But for Shenzhen, Pete?” I said. “For that one shithole.”

“No, no, Artie. Hundreds. Dawn, make that baby stop crying, will you? Listen, in the next century, when borders are irrelevant and people expendable, the trade will explode. Look at the map. The old borders are gone.”

“Why are you here? What do you want?”

“To see my wife, of course. I'm sorry I couldn't make it to the races. You thought you'd keep me in Hong Kong and away from Shenzhen, did you, darling? I was amused that you put Alice Wing up to asking me, though.”

“What about Lily Hanes?” I said.

“God, I'm bored with Lily Hanes.” He looked at his watch. “Swatch,” he said. “Sharp. I hate expensive watches. As for you, Artie Cohen. You got in the way. That's all.”

“And the babies? The ones you let die?”

“No one wants a sick baby. Or an ugly one. Do they, Artie? Do you?”

The baby in Dawn's arms was fast asleep, and she handed her to me, then reached for a cigarette in the pack that lay on the table. Slowly, she lit one, inhaled and blew out the smoke. “He calls the babies Poppies,” she said. “Like opium poppies. Like the irradiated opium poppies in the heroin he got for me. If they get too big or too ugly or too sick, they must be cut down. Hot Poppies is what he calls the babies he kills. It's his joke. Pete's a real poet.”

Except for the dull roar of the trucks passing outside, it was deadly quiet in the room. There was only the one door. There was no other way out.

Pete reached over and, lightly, with the tips of his fingers, he stroked Dawn's face.

“You didn't have to fuck him, did you?”

Before I could put the baby down and make a move, Leung pulled Dawn to her feet and grabbed Dawn's wrists. He held them behind her back. Twisted them.

“I'm not so small as my brothers in China, perhaps. But I'm the same. I went to Oxford. To Harvard. Penn. I sound like you. I sound better. Different brain, though. The Chinese are different. We don't like our wives screwing around.” His expression changed. “I loved Dawn. I really did. But she was a fake.”

The baby was heavy. Pete had Dawn's hands twisted behind her. The door opened a crack and one of the thugs looked in, but Pete shook his head and the door closed again,

“When Dawn couldn't carry a baby to term, my mother said, ‘Get her medical records, perhaps we can help.' I got the records from New York. Something bothered me. A note from a pediatrician.” Dawn's face remained blank. Slowly, his voice full of vitriol, Pete Leung continued. “Dawn isn't the Taes' real daughter. My wife, Dawn, is trash. She betrayed me in every way.”

“You're crazy,” she said. “Let me go.”

“You've heard of the Walled City? It's gone now, but it was an outlaw nation in the middle of Hong Kong. On the border of Kowloon and the New Territories, actually. The buildings were so close together, there was no light even in the daytime. It was a slum run by gangsters.”

“So?”

“Shut up, Artie. In the courtyard which was surrounded by the tenements there was a kind of temple. People threw whatever crap they didn't want onto the temple roof. They found Dawn there with the other shit.”

Panic showed on Dawn's face now and I saw her look towards the window. Don't do it, I thought. Crying now, the baby clung to me.

“The Taes found her in an orphanage and took her to America and passed her off as their own. No one told me. I was in love with her. It was all perfect. But she was garbage.” A muscle twitched in Pete's neck, the tendons stood out hard against his collar. “You're the only guy who ever made me sweat, Artie. The only one, and I resent that. And that you fucked my wife.”

The rain sluiced down. The traffic thinned out. I could hear the baby's heart and my own. I had to gamble. “This is insanity, Pete. This is how the goons behave. Someone told me your father was a decent man. You were a decent man. Let her go.”

Dawn looked at her husband, then at me. “His father was a bastard. Literally. He has to punish everyone for it.”

Suddenly, Pete Leung called out to the thugs. The men came into the room and stood, backs to the door, a solid wall of muscle and weaponry.

Still holding Dawn's wrists, Pete forced her onto a chair. He moved his hands to her shoulders. She was his prisoner.

“I can do anything I like. I have an American passport like you. And I am Chinese.” Pete echoed what Dawn had said earlier. “The Americans like me because I'm one of them but I can cut a deal with the Chinese. The Chinese like me because I know how to behave myself. I speak their language, whatever it happens to be. This is about business. You see Artie, no one is going to raise a stink about me, whatever I do.”

“Don't be too fucking sure.”

“Who's going to rescue you? Your fat Russian?” He snorted. “Your faggot policeman? No one is going to rescue you, although I suppose I might let
you
go. No point in killing an American.” He slipped his hands around Dawn's neck. ‘My wife, however, I could kill with real pleasure. I'll let you keep the baby, Artie. I'll keep my wife.”

“Do it,” Dawn gasped. “Do it, Artie. He won't dare hurt me. I'm his wife. He's too proud.”

At the door Pete's men shifted their weight. The floor creaked. The lights of the passing trucks made shadows on the ceiling. The baby began to wail.

Pete's body suddenly twitched. He pressed down hard on Dawn's neck, harder and harder, until she was gasping. She swayed on her chair. Then, as abruptly, he let her go. He let go of her and slapped her face once, very hard. It cracked like a rifle going off. He called out to the thugs. One of them opened the door.

“I'm bored,” Pete said. “I'm bored with both of you. I really did think of killing you, Dawn. But it's not worth it. You're not worth it. I can always find you, can't I? It's more fun that way.”

Halfway out the door, Pete Leung turned. “See you around,” he said, and then he left and was driven away into the Chinese night.

EPILOGUE

NewYork

  

Sonny Lippert was sitting in the window of Mike Rizzi's coffee shop when I got out of the cab a week later. The sun was out. It was spring.

I had stayed on in Hong Kong after Tolya picked us up from the border crossing in his Hummer. Ricky Tae flew into Hong Kong, said he was feeling great and that it was his turn to look after his sister. “My turn,” he said, and moved into the new flat Dawn rented. But Dawn was busy. She and Tolya had warmed up to each other. Tolya put his guys on permanent duty looking after Dawn. The two of them did a lot of shopping. Still, Ricky stayed on. I wasn't sure, but I got the feeling he met someone in Hong Kong. It was weeks before I discovered it was Ringo Chen.

I stuck around Hong Kong until Alice Wing had fixed some things for me. Then I called Lily and left a message to say I was coming home. “Come to dinner. Come tomorrow night.”

“I wish you'd stay, Artie.” Dawn kissed me on the cheek. I kissed her back and went home.

From the window of the coffee shop, Sonny saluted me, then he and Mike ran into the street to help me get everything out of the cab and into my apartment.

I asked about Hillel Abramsky. Mike said, “He's going to shrink school, Artie. He's going to be OK.”

Pete Leung was missing in China, Sonny told me. The orphanage in Shenzhen had been shut down. Sonny had already collared a number of sweatshop owners. At least a few of the enforcers would fry if he had his way. Things would get better for a while. Then the cockroaches would return.

“You can nuke 'em and they always come back,” Sonny said as we stood in front of my door. “I'm glad you're home safe, Artie.” Me too, I thought. Me too.

When they left, I called Lily up. “Come tonight.”

She said she was tired.

“Oh just do it, OK? Just this once, do it for me, don't say anything, just come, don't argue, don't give me sixteen reasons why. Just come. Six o'clock. Six. Be here.”

By the time she got to my place, I think she had guessed. Instinct. Something in my voice.

Under one arm, she had my copy of the Tony Bennett album, the vinyl I'd lent her and she'd given to Phil Frye. “I stole it back,” she grinned. In the other hand she held the teddy bear whose eyes her mother had removed when Lily was a baby.

Lured by the sound of
The Lion King
and maybe the chuckling noises, Lily headed straight to the bedroom. At the door, she turned and, looking beautiful, said, “I thought you only asked me over for dinner.”

“Yeah, well, dinner and to tell you I brought you something from China.”