Joe Gores - Spade & Archer

Spade climbed up Washington from Grant Avenue to Stockton Street on the upper edge of Chinatown. Late-fall sunshine flooded the street. St. John’s Methodist Church was sheathed in shingles, topped with a witch-hat shingle tower. Mai-lin Choi and a slender, slightly stooped whipcord man wearing a minister’s dark suit awaited Spade between carved ornamental wooden gates.

“Mr. Spade,” said Mai-lin formally, “this is the Reverend Pastor Sabbath Zhu Pomeroy. Reverend Zhu, Mr. Samuel Spade.”

They shook hands. Zhu’s long fingers were bony but strong. His mixed blood was most apparent in his shiny black hair and in the hint of a slant in dark eyes behind thick horn-rimmed glasses. He peered at Spade for a long, intent moment.

“I recommended you to Miss Choi for your competence as a detective, not for your truthfulness or sense of honor.”

“Yeah. Well, thanks.” Spade gestured at the little church behind them. “You’re the pastor here?”

“Oh, no, assistant pastor only. And only very recently that. I chose it as our meeting place because it is here that I first heard Sun Yat-sen speak.”

Mai-lin gave a visible start. “You met my father?”

“Only heard him speak. It was enough. Let us go inside.”

Light from the tall windows flooded the interior. At the front were the pulpit, the organ, and two tiers of risers for the choir at Sunday services. Pastor Zhu gestured Mai-lin into a pew halfway up the broad central aisle, slid in beside her. Spade stood in the aisle facing them, his back to the altar, one hand resting on the back of the pew ahead of theirs.

“After my ordination I first was sent to one of the Chinese churches in the valley. Then, eventually, I was assigned here. It was the fulfillment of all my dreams.”

“Because you heard Sun Yat-sen speak here?”

“Exactly. He arrived here on April sixth, nineteen oh four, traveling under false papers that declared him to have been born in Hawaii and thus eligible for American citizenship.”

Mai-lin said hotly, “Employees of the Customs Service who were members of the Society to Protect the Emperor recognized my father and denounced him. He was detained for several weeks.”

Reverend Zhu said, “It was cooperation between the Chinese pastor of this little Methodist church and his local converts, along with the efforts of the head of a local Triad, that brought enough pressure to finally get Sun Yat-sen admitted.”

The door at their backs opened. An aged Chinese woman, carrying bags and sacks and made shapeless by a black coat, came past them to edge her way into the front pew on the opposite side. She sat down wearily, distributing her bags around her.

“They had a ‘grand meeting’ at this church. Your father spoke. I was here, a boy of nine, right in this very pew.” Zhu began to declaim in a booming orator’s voice that made the old woman turn painfully to look at him, then away. “ ‘America, we need your help because you are the pioneers of Western civilization. Because you are a Christian nation. Because we intend to model our new government after yours. Above all, because you are the champions of liberty and democracy.’ ”

Mai-lin was silent, as if transfixed by her father’s words. Spade’s face had become almost stupid in its lack of expression.

Before the quake Grant had been known as Dupont Gai, Street of a Thousand Lanterns. The two-block climb from the Bush Street Gate to California was then lined with gambling clubs and brothels with half-opened window shutters through which scantily clad Caucasian whores raucously called their prices at passersby. The cribs had burned in the ’06 fire; they had been replaced by bazaars and restaurants and import houses and warehouses.

On the southeast and southwest corners of Grant and California were the Sing Fat Company and its competitor, the Sing Chong Company. Both were four-storied, with ornate balconies and decorations and pagoda-style towers.

“Sing Fat means Living Riches,” said Sabbath Zhu, “and Sing Chong, Living Prosperity.”

In a white-tiled butcher shop in the next block an aged Chinese man with a wispy Confucius goatee and timeless eyes was using a gleaming cleaver to section a whole pig roasted to a deep mahogany color. On hooks behind his head hung a dozen smoked ducks.

The next building was the Chow Chong Trading Company. Its spotless windows featured carved ivory and teak statues, porcelain bowls and vases, bronze temple bells. The display cases were filled with silk, lacquer, embroidery, and cloisonné. The air was heavy with sandalwood and camphor-wood. A dozen Westerners were shopping, browsing, buying.

A woman in a form-fitting floor-length silk gown approached them. She had a serene narrow face, hair that could have been lacquered itself, and dignity in her bearing.

Mai-lin spoke to her in Cantonese. Her face suddenly became animated. She replied excitedly, with many hand gestures. She looked over at Reverend Zhu, seemed to study him deeply, then bowed even more deeply, started to go on in Chinese.

Reverend Zhu said in a gentle voice, “Please, in English.” He gestured at Spade. “So our Western guest will be able to follow the conversation.”

She switched to only very slightly singsong English.

“I am Moon-fong Li. You honor me by your presence.”

She led them past a silk curtain and around silk-paneled screens to a small room, seated them around a hardwood table. An aged retainer in traditional dress brought a delicate teapot and four exquisite handleless bowls on doughnutlike saucers. Moon-fong Li went to the door with him, stood with her hand on his arm, speaking earnestly in low tones. He bowed, departed. She returned to fill their cups with steaming tea, spring-water-clear, pale amber, delicate of taste.

“When your father was released from detention in nineteen oh four he was taken directly to my parents’ home under cover of night. My brother, Yee-chum Li, was twelve. I was eight.”

A sudden youthful smile lit up Moon-fong Li’s features, momentarily replacing dignity with delight.

“When Sun Yat-sen had to move about Chinatown we always had to make sure he was well hidden in various parishioners’ homes. It was great fun for us as little children, even though we felt the weight of responsibility because our parents told us that Sun Yat-sen would be the savior of our homeland.”

“Why did he have to hide out?” asked Spade, sipping tea. “He had officially been admitted to the United States.”

Mai-lin said, “He was being dogged by imperial agents of the Manchus.” To Moon-fong Li she said, “Did you meet my father again upon his return to San Francisco in nineteen ten?”

“No, but my brother did. He was eighteen then, a man.”

Reverend Zhu said, “Am I correct in my belief that your father had to counter the fund-raising activies of Kang Youwei, his rival for the loyalty of the American Cantonese?”

“Yes.” Mai-lin turned to Spade. “Kang Youwei was the founder of the Society to Protect the Emperor. It was his people who denounced my father to Immigration in nineteen oh four. They did not wish to unseat the Manchu dynasty, but to preserve it.”

Moon-fong Li said, “I took the liberty of sending our retainer to my brother’s restaurant to tell him you might wish to speak with him. Yee-chum Li’s on Waverly Place.”

The scents of ginger, hot peppers, and herbs followed them up Sacramento Street. Outside an import shop they had to step around a wet wooden tub filled with fuzzy-looking sea snails.

At the corner of Waverly Place, Spade, Mai-lin, and Pastor Zhu went down a set of worn steps to a basement. A black-spotted inset mirror above the heavy double doors reflected their yellowish distorted images. When the moonfaced girl of five who stood on the cashier’s stool behind a glass-topped counter saw them she leaped down and ran to the back of the restaurant.