Seattle Noir

“You’ve done nice work on this, boy. Nice work, indeed. Perhaps I’ve misjudged you.”

“I fail to see how I’ve done anything of the kind. If this ‘mooey jai’ killed our Chinaman, then who is the fellow in the cage? Why does he resist any attempt at communication?”

“The fellow in the cage is the killer of our man, and that man is without doubt Louie Chong. The mui tsai played no part in this except that of victim, poor thing.”

“But then why did this ‘paper son’ of Louie Chong’s fight me so hard to keep me from that ledger?”

“Paper son?”

“Yes, the ‘mooey jai,’ that’s how Mr. Chin translated the name: called him a ‘paper son’ in English. Claimed it was a reference to some false identification scheme running rampant through China.”

“A mui tsai,” Porter said, “is not a son of any kind. The phrase mui tsai in Cantonese means ‘slave girl’.”

Jewell’s jaw dropped. It all suddenly made sense. The slight build, the odd cast of the boy’s features, the piping voice.

Porter went back to perusing Chin’s letter. “Chin’s old partner Chin Chun Hock runs an opium den in the basement of his establishment. The bulls know about it. As long as they get their cut, they turn a blind eye to it, shrug it off as being part of the degenerate Oriental culture. Time was when part and parcel of that den was a brothel stocked with Cantonese girls brought over here by the triads. Chin bought their freedom as part of his deal to leave Hock with the lion’s share of the profits from their partnership. But Louie Chong had pull with the triad, and he’d already bought one of the girls to keep for himself. He passed her off as a boy working in his laundry. You can imagine how else he used her. It was common knowledge among the Chinese. I told you that their notions of charity are not the same as ours.”

“So why did this fellow,” Jewell motioned with his head in the direction of the cell and its occupant, “kill Louie Chong and dump him in Lake Washington?”

“Who can say? Some sense of chivalry, perhaps?”

“I doubt that. Look at the poor wretch. He’s an opium fiend if ever there was one. And where is the girl?”

“She’s gone. Chin didn’t mention what’s become of her, but I have no doubt that she’s not to be found within the limits of King County this morning.”

Jewell sat thinking for a moment. Porter watched him intently. At length Jewell said, “I didn’t see any of it.”

Porter shifted his bulk in the Sears, Roebuck, and Co. chair. “You knew which questions to ask, just not which answers to listen for. But you’ve shown promise I didn’t think you had in you. On the other hand,” he said as he reached for his pocket watch and began to wind it, “Chin did tell you everything you needed to know in that single conversation. You’ve come a long way in three months, but if you’re going to be the Treasury Man in these parts, you’ve still got quite a ways to go before you’re ready.”

“Yes sir. Apparently I have much to learn,” Jewell said, chastened.

“Just remember this: it’s also possible to go too far, to be too good at your job. It’s a tricky, tricky balance. Don’t go far enough and you can’t understand them and you won’t get anything constructive done. Don’t get the work done and you risk losing your position. Go too far and you risk much more. There’s a lot more at work in Chinatown than meets the eye.”

“How do you mean?”

Porter motioned with a broad hand past Jewell’s shoulder in the direction of the cell and the wretch who occupied it, the man turned completely inward, focused on the wreckage of a last opium dream.

“That,” he said glumly, “was once Sebastian Clute.”

THE MAGNOLIA BLUFFBY SKYE MOODY

Magnolia

I

Before his star rose Skippy Smathers worked the carney circuit. He always played the dwarf clown. At thirteen he joined Carneytown Circus and right off the bat they made him a solo act. He’d been clowning in that show ten years when one night on a slippery tightrope Mel the Diminutive Man stepped into his life. The way it happened was some kind of kismet.

It happened under the big top in Walla Walla, Washington. Walking the highwire, Skippy lost balance and toppled off, tumbling for a chaotic eternity, pitching and falling until finally he landed with a broadside bounce in the mesh safety net. It wasn’t the first time Skippy had plunged from a high-wire, but this mishap, more topsy-turvy than most, jarred his nerves. Floundering in the net webbing, panic-stricken, Skippy’s fear paralyzed him while the crowd roared: “Go back up! Sissy clown! Go back up!”

He wore a costume of baby clothes, a frilly bonnet, a grease-pencil baby face. The crowd saw an overgrown infant, not a twenty-three-year-old terrified dwarf. Jeers and hisses rained down. But he wouldn’t go back up there. Couldn’t. He sat in the net bawling as the crowd booed the frightened clown-baby.

“Booooo.” “Sissy Pants!” “Dumb midget!” “Booooo!”

In the wings, Mel the Diminutive Man heard the rude din. Grabbing a long baton Mel stepped onto the tightrope, regal in his leotard and tights, a natural born star. The spotlight swung to the tightrope, the crowd naturally rolled their eyes up to the sleek, pixie-like man stepping into the glare. Balancing his weight with the long baton Mel performed slow pirouettes along the tightrope, distracting the audience, while in the net below Skippy foundered in fear’s lap. Somewhere a drummer tickled cymbals, adding to the tension as Mel the Diminutive Man captivated the awestruck crowd.

No longer the focal point, Skippy gradually recovered his nerves, scrambled over to the ladder, up the tightrope, and set a seasoned foot on the taut line. One cautiously arched step after another he moved toward this dark stranger, this apparition, this highwire angel offering his tiny hand. A breathless moment later, Skippy touched that hand to thundering applause.

Mel grinned at Skippy and quipped, “Way to go, sport.”

Mel’s first brush with an audience earned him a standing ovation, but he reacted with scorn and revulsion. After all these years of inventing Mel the Diminutive Man, he had squandered his debut on this claptrap crowd.

II

It was 1973. Mel was twenty-one and had been living off Ma all these years because she insisted her pixie was too delicate for work. When Ma died of exhaustion Mel worried about what would become of him, but not for long. Under Ma’s mattress Mel discovered a fortune in nickels and dimes and quarters that she had squirreled away over the years of hard labor. Her accumulated pocket change would have choked a Coinstar.

Mel fled their rat-infested Yesler Terrace housing project, bought a spanking new Cadillac convertible, and floated over the Magnolia Bridge into the Village, where he parked in front of Leon’s Shoe Repair, ignoring the gawking Magnolians-Mel was probably the first dwarf to ever set foot in the neighborhood-and crossed McGraw Street to Magnolia Real Estate, where he and his bank balance were greeted with equanimity and a firm handshake to seal the transfer of a Magnolia Bluff house deed for cold cash.

Signing and initialing each contract clause Mel noted the bigotry: Property transfer and residency are restricted to Caucasians. Forgetting his own place in society, Mel signed it. Had Ma been above ground, she would have slapped him silly. Mel reasoned it was her fault, anyway, her making him rich.

Mel moved into the prettiest house Dahl ever built on Magnolia Bluff, whose namesake cliff plunged