Yellowthread Street (5 page)

Mr Skilbeck drew a deep breath, then let it out in a whisky-rubbery sound.

‘Funny!’ Apricot Tang Lee said and giggled.

Mr Skilbeck did it again.

‘This’s a nice place you’ve got here,’ Mr Skilbeck said heavily. What he could see of it looked dim and gloomy and sequined. Nice. ‘This all there is of it?’

‘Rooms upstairs,’ Apricot said. She poured him another drink. ‘Rooms for very naughty boys.’

Mr Skilbeck looked at her breasts again.

‘Nice,’ Apricot Tang Lee said.

‘Yeah.’ He downed the drink and looked at Apricot Tang Lee’s legs and breasts. He thought this was a nice place. He thought, American women—‘American women,’ Mr Skilbeck said definitively, ‘are stupid bitches.’ He sniffed. ‘It has been my experience, having been married to one for three thousand years, that American women are stupid bitches.’ There was another drink in front of him and he drank it.

‘You American from—’

‘New Jersey,’ Mr Skilbeck said, ‘I’m from New Jersey. Have you ever been to New Jersey?’

Apricot Tang Lee shook her head.

‘The men from New Jersey,’ Mr Skilbeck said, ‘are very good lovers, but they have the problem of marrying stupid bitches from New Jersey. All the women from New Jersey are stupid bitches who get married to you and are stupid bitches who get married—’ He forgot what he was trying to say. ‘I forgot what I was trying to say.’

‘New Jersey man good lover?’

‘Right.’

‘O.K.’ Apricot said.

‘Right,’ Mr Skilbeck said.

Apricot nodded and flexed her pectoral muscles.

‘Right,’ Mr Skilbeck said, ‘this is a very interesting conversation.’ He poured himself a drink, ‘Don’t you drink?’

‘Very bad for lady,’ Apricot Tang Lee said. ‘Too strong. For strong New Jersey man.’

‘Sensible,’ Mr Skilbeck said. He nodded and nodded again, kept on nodding, managed to stop nodding and said, ‘Right.’

Apricot Tang Lee raised her eyes heavenward at the barman. The barman raised his eyes heavenward at Apricot Tang Lee.

‘Do you take Traveller’s Cheques?’ Mr Skilbeck asked. He said quickly, reassuringly, ‘American money.’

Apricot Tang Lee opened her mouth to say yes.

‘American women drink too much,’ Mr Skilbeck said, ‘they’re always drinking too much. Drink, drink, drink, drink, drink, yell, yell, yell, yell, shout, shout, shout, shout, bitch,
bitch, bitch, nag, nag, nag, nag, bitch, bitch, bitch, bitch, and they get lost. Stupid bitches. I like Chinese girls.’

Apricot Tang Lee sighed to herself and smiled sympathetically at Mr Skilbeck.

‘What’s your name, honey?’ Mr Skilbeck asked.

‘Apricot.’

Half a dozen sailors from the American destroyer in the harbour came in making a lot of noise to show they were at home in bars and dancehalls. They took a table in the centre of the floor.

‘None of your watered down shit,’ the leader, a tall African, shouted to the barman. ‘Good stuff. Scotch. From Scotland, England.’

Apricot Tang Lee glanced at the sailors.

‘I was in the Navy,’ Mr Skilbeck said. ‘In the Korean war. Things I could tell you.’ He said, ‘I was in the Navy,’ and yelled across the floor to the African, ‘What do you say, Captain?’

The African looked over. He said, ‘Hi,’ and went back to his conversation with the others. A couple of hostesses came over and sat with them.

‘What do you say, brother?’ Mr Skilbeck, who watched a lot of television at home, yelled over, ‘Right on!’

The African raised his hand in a Vee sign.

‘Brother!’ Mr Skilbeck said.

‘Yeah,’ the African said and turned away to the girls. Mr Skilbeck heard him say, ‘I got a lotta money coming whenever I want to pick it up,’ and Mr Skilbeck said to Apricot Tang Lee, ‘I gotta lotta money too.’

‘I’m a kinda movie star,’ the African said and guffawed with laughter.

‘I gotta lotta—’ Mr Skilbeck began. Apricot watched the sailors. ‘I’ve got money,’ Mr Skilbeck said.

‘Fifty bucks,’ Apricot said. Someone came through the door and glanced at her as he went past towards the back rooms. She said, ‘Good evening, Inspector Spencer.’

‘Cop!’ someone in the African’s party said and they fell silent and looked at their drinks, their girls, their hands, their tabletop, the walls.

‘Hullo,’ Spencer said. Feiffer had taken him on a tour of the bars and dancehalls on his first day, but he couldn’t remember all the names, ‘Is Miss Ping in?’

‘Miss Alice is in her office,’ Apricot said in Cantonese.

‘No one in the rooms upstairs I trust?’ Spencer said.

Apricot shook her little head so hard her long hair flew out and whisked painfully across Mr Skilbeck’s fragile eyes.

‘Not while I’m here anyway,’ Spencer said. He glanced at the party of sailors.

‘I’m going out to get some money,’ the African said. He got up and left.

Spencer looked at Mr Skilbeck. Mr Skilbeck smiled absently at him.

‘Office?’ Spencer confirmed.

Apricot nodded.

Mr Skilbeck nodded.

Spencer went past the sailors towards the office.

‘Have a drink,’ Apricot Tang Lee said. She poured a quick shot for Mr Skilbeck. She was so annoyed she spilled most of it on the table.

‘I’ve got bad eyes,’ the little old Chinese lady said to O’Yee, ‘I can’t read the subtitles in the front.’

‘Go to the back then,’ O’Yee said. He handed her a front stalls ticket for the money she had counted out on the counter-top.

‘Thank you, thank you,’ the little old Chinese lady said eagerly. She scuttled towards the manager and the curtained doorway, handed him the ticket, and told him what the nice young man in the cashier’s booth had said.

The manager moved back the curtain and the little old Chinese lady went in happily. The manager looked daggers at the nice young man in the cashier’s booth.

‘I’ve got bad eyes too,’ the little old Chinese man next in the queue behind the little old Chinese lady said. He counted out the exact price of a front stalls ticket.

‘Not twice in a row,’ O’Yee said. ‘You must think I’m stupid.’

Tears appeared in the little old Chinese man’s eyes. ‘We’re married,’ he said plaintively, ‘We couldn’t—’

‘O.K.,’ O’Yee said. He thought this was a hard job for a man who suffered from an excess of kind-heartedness. He looked up at the next customer in the queue. The next customer was a teenage boy who wore no glasses, looked in the pink of health and prime condition and handed him a ten dollar note.

‘Front or back?’ O’Yee asked confidently.

The healthy specimen of a teenage boy thought for a moment.

‘What did you sell my grandfather and grandmother?’ he asked, ‘I’ll sit with them.’

The African went out of
Alice’s,
crossed over Icehouse Street, and turned into Hong Bay Beach Lane near the Bus Station. He went into the first novelty shop in the lane and purchased three plastic bow and arrow sets, a plastic speedcar made in Taiwan, a Ludo and Chess set made out of cardboard with little paper markers, a magnetic Scrabble game set in a green plastic travel wallet, a black plastic imitation of a Colt Government Model .45 calibre automatic pistol, three Chinese dolls with fixed expressions of schizophrenic withdrawal and no clothes on, and a rubber snake with green eyes and yellow fangs. The girl assistant put it all in a paper bag for him.

Back in Icehouse Street he deposited everything except the pistol into the first litter bin he saw and walked up the road to see what was on at the movies.

Auden leaned back in his wooden chair in the Yellowthread Street Police Station and contemplated the finished accident report still in his typewriter. All he had to do was sign it. He contemplated the final flourish of a signature and
thought it wasn’t a bad typing job. He glanced at the open door to the street. A few people went by, one way and the other, going or coming to or from places, but none of them seemed in dire need of the police. No one came in with a problem. Delicious, that was the word that crossed Auden’s mind. It was a delicious feeling that all was right with the world. The accident report from last night had been typed up. It would go to the insurance company. There would be no court case; life, limb or serious property damage had not been involved, and Minnie Oh was down the corridor in her office. She might even feel all was so well with her world to come out and talk to him while the new opposition, Spencer, was away in the brothel centre of the Orient.

Auden felt a delicious feeling of well-being. It was ten o’clock and he had only been called out once (for the lunatic rickshaw man who should have been bashed for falsely claiming he had been bashed) since he had come on duty, and Minnie Oh might wander out on her black high heels on her long, long legs and all was well.

He decided in his perfect lassitude to clean his gun. He took it out from his top drawer in its Berns-Martin upside-down holster he had ordered all the way from America and looked at it lovingly.

Non-regulation, it was a Colt Python with a two-and-a-half-inch barrel, and, regulation, the first chamber had been loaded with a .38. If Auden ever had to shoot anyone the .38 was what the Department decreed it should be done with, but in the next chamber—Auden had decided in an imaginative moment that the second shot would not be to save the Department’s reputation but to save Auden’s life—the cartridge was a .357 magnum.

In the new movie at the Peacock Auden had seen the other night, John Wayne had blasted a hired assassin with a magnum and Auden had secretly quivered with excitement in his seat.

He clicked out the cylinder and checked that the .38 round
was next up to the hammer and the .357 was immediately after it.

He pointed the weapon at the wall and said, ‘Wallop!’ God, he felt deliciously idle . . .

He yawned.

‘Chen?’ Feiffer asked Chen quietly. The photograph had been a good one.

Chen went on cooking pork in his circular wok over a charcoal fire. One of the eaters sitting next to Feiffer put his half-finished meal down on the counter and decided to leave.

‘Where’s your partner Mr Wang?’ Feiffer asked. He glanced at the licence card tacked up to one of the upright supports of the wooden stall. It said Chen and Wang and the photos were the same. The man cooking was Mr Chen, the husband, and without too much doubt, the axeman.

‘Do you want a meal?’ Chen asked without turning around.

Feiffer thought, ‘My Cantonese accent isn’t that good. He knows who I am.’

Chen went on cooking the pork, flicking minute quantities of peanut oil into the wok to keep the pork pieces sizzling.

‘No,’ Feiffer said, ‘I want you. I’m a Police Inspector.’

There were three other customers sitting and standing at the stall and they too decided to leave. They went over to the rice owner’s stall and struck up an earnest conversation.

‘Your customers have gone,’ Feiffer said. He thought he could vault over the bench table if Chen made a run for it. He said, ‘I think you and I have something to discuss, don’t we?’

Chen nodded. He kept his eyes on the frying pork and flicked a little more peanut oil into the wok. He turned and gazed at Feiffer and nodded again. Feiffer thought he was deciding something.

‘No customers,’ Chen said. His voice sounded very sad and disappointed. He emptied the half-fried pork into a bowl by the side of the fire and ladled oil into the wok. He held the
wok carefully and swirled the oil about in it until it began to boil. Feiffer put his hand under his coat for his pistol.

‘Don’t do anything silly,’ Feiffer said, ‘there’s no reason why we can’t settle this without trouble.’

Chen nodded. He looked down at the boiling oil and then at the long carving knife he used for the pork.

‘You’re not going to be silly,’ Feiffer said. His hand closed around the butt of the Colt Airweight and moved it slightly in its leather holster.

‘I’m an illegal,’ Chen said. He nodded towards the licence card, ‘That’s forged. I haven’t got a licence.’

‘Yes.’

He was not a young man and Feiffer saw that his back was beginning to stoop, and the way he held the wok suggested that, increasingly, he found things getting heavier. He put the wok down on the charcoal fire and the oil bubbled furiously. He rubbed at his chin with a bony hand. Then he picked the wok up again and went on with his work.

‘You’re not cooking anything in that,’ Feiffer said, ‘I think you had better pour the oil out and we’ll have a chat.’

‘I came over from Canton,’ Chen said, ‘I swam the Pearl River. I didn’t register because the government wasn’t accepting any more refugees.’ He jerked his head at the licence card again, ‘Wang said we could make money because if we weren’t registered we wouldn’t pay taxes. That’s why it’s such a bad location.’

‘Behind the rice stall.’

‘Hmm.’ He nodded.

‘Was Wang registered?’

He thought Chen made a bitter smile. ‘He was Hong Kong born. He said he was my friend. We were partners. He took seventy per cent because he was hiding me and he got the forged licence. He was sleeping with my wife.’ He said quickly, ‘She wasn’t an illegal—just me. Wang introduced me to her and said she would be a good wife.’

‘Was he sleeping with her tonight?’ Feiffer asked. He kept
his eyes on the boiling oil, the knife, and on the tension in Chen’s hands and elbows.

‘Oh, yes,’ Chen said. The oil was simmering hot. Feiffer wondered how he could hold the wok. He thought the man probably didn’t even feel it. ‘Oh, yes,’ Chen said, ‘Oh, yes.’

‘And you killed them both?’

‘Oh, yes,’ Chen said. ‘Yes, I did that.’

‘You know you’ll have to come with me?’

‘Oh, yes.’

‘Come on then.’

‘All right,’ Chen said and threw the boiling oil at him.

In that instant, Feiffer ducked and the oil passed to one side of him, Chen dropped the wok and reached for his knife, Feiffer yanked at the pistol and jammed it in the leather of the holster and his shirt and Chen leapt over the back wall of the wooden stall and began running towards him.

Feiffer yanked at the gun in the crouching position and overbalanced. He fell against a stool and brought it down as Chen went past him with the knife poised in the air. He went towards the rice stall and the talkers. The talkers scattered. Feiffer yelled, ‘Stop him!’ and the talkers, without hesitation, got out of Chen’s way. He collided with the rice owner’s stall and brought an opened bag of rice crashing down from a weighing machine to one side of the counter and slipped in the cascade of grains.