Henry Chang - Red Jade

The message he left with Nicoll sounded like a telegram: “Two AM, Got call from INTERPOL. Went to South King, got into a fight. Two men, Chinese. Something to do with a triad.” Pause. “Or a tong. There’s another person of interest, who may be a suspect. A woman. Keep in touch.”

Jack brought Alex back to his airport motel room, where she applied ice packs to the swollen welts that ran across his left shoulder. He could tell she was embarrassed by the economy room, comparing it to hers at the Westin.

She noticed old scars on his chest and arms, and remembered visiting him in the hospital after he’d been shot while investigating the murder of the food delivery boy.

Meanwhile the big man with the iron nunchakus had reminded Jack of Golo, the tall Hip Ching enforcer, and the vicious fight they’d had in Brooklyn’s Chinatown. They’d wounded each other then, but Jack had since left Golo very dead on a San Francisco rooftop. Now Jack was again chasing the same woman who, in his mind’s eye, was just a fleeting image disappearing behind a rooftop door as he sent two hollow-point bullets after her.

The triad information from INTERPOL made Jack think of the old men of the Hip Ching Benevolent Association back in New York; they’d played dumb about their murdered boss, offering up the Fukienese newcomers as bait.

Jack felt that the fight and flight on South King had the stink of the Hip Chings around it. It’d been their business from the start and they were finishing it now. The Paper Fan was connected to the Hip Chings somehow, and Jack heard the echo of the RHKP’s voice: Find the woman, you’ll find him.

It was almost 3 AM when he and Alex delved back into the Seattle directories. They sought addresses for anything Hip Ching: cultural organizations, benevolent societies, trade associations, credit unions, fraternal and village societies, immigrant self-help services.

Outside the motel window the night sky had opened up to pounding sheets of rain.

Within an hour they’d narrowed it down to an address in Chinatown that housed three Hip Ching-affiliated organizations. Three, a magic Chinese number, Jack knew.

Alex was wide-eyed, wired.

The adrenaline and the espresso-and-liqueur mixture had juiced them up, and they went to the car for the drive back to Chinatown.

He’d had a fitful sleep on the bed of the convertible couch in the back office of the Benevolent Association. He was concerned about not leaving a trace of his stay in Say nga touh , and his throbbing knee hadn’t responded to the hot towel wrap.

Tsai grimaced as he rubbed the pungent brown deet da jow along the outside of his left knee, where the Chinese chaai lo cop had kicked him. The liniment bit at his nostrils. I should have gone for the face, Tsai thought, closing his eyes as he put more pressure into the rub. It would have had a greater impact. He’d played it safe, had chosen to go for the torso, the bigger target, instead of the head, aiming the shuriken into the cop’s gut.

Tsai measured his breathing, twisted his face away from the smell of the deet da jow. He imagined the big 49 fighter flailing with his metal nunchakus. A big lug, lacking in training. They’d let the cop off lightly. And women were bad luck, he cursed, rubbing anger into the pain around his knee.

They’d have to be more discreet about the temple now.

The call from the female Grass Sandal assuaged Tsai’s pain, although he still felt bad luck in the air. She’d been ambitious and had discovered another connection to the missing woman, Mona.

This discovery had come about precisely because she was a woman and undoubtedly would garner her some attention from the triad’s national ranks.

In the privacy of the front office, Tsai rested his leg on the coffee table, looked out over Elliott Bay, and listened to her report.

“She’s found a woman doctor,” the Grass Sandal said.

Tsai assumed she meant a female doctor.

“An ob-gyn,” she added for detail, “a woman’s doctor.”

The clarification was sharp; of course he hadn’t considered it. A woman’s doctor .

Acting on a hunch, the female 432 had guessed that a woman of Mona’s experience would seek out a gynecologist and, because she was Chinese, would probably prefer a female doctor. Checking the local listings for women’s medical services around the Chinatown area, she had narrowed the choices down to two female doctor: an Indian and a Vietnamese-Chinese.

The Indian doctor required medical insurance, but the Vietnamese occasionally accepted cash. From new patients, all that was required was a photo ID and a mailing address where she could send follow-up reports.

The female 432 had visited the Vietnamese doctor, had filled in the required information in the New Patient sign-in log, and had prepaid with cash. After the exam, she used the bathroom while the doctor prepared for her next patient. On the way out, she pilfered the log-in ledger, which contained the addresses of the year’s new patients. One in particular stood out.

A Chinese woman had paid cash, and had given an address on James Street.

Tsai commended the Grass Sandal’s smart work, and formally thanked her for her diligence and ingenuity. He made a note of the address and then hung up.

The address was not far from Chinatown.

Dew keuih , Tsai muttered as he rubbed in the rest of the liniment, fuck her.

Considering how he would approach Mona, he scanned the shelves of the association office; they were filled with stacks of Chinese newspapers and magazines, assorted health-care and census forms.

The Benevolent Association had sponsored several Chinese-speaking census takers as part of a community outreach program. They’d registered several dozen American-born Chinese but knew that thousands of Chinese illegals would never respond.

But it was good public relations. Face.

He grabbed a clipboard from the desk and slipped an artist’s likeness of Mona under the clip. He covered it with a stack of census forms. After wiping clear his wire-frame glasses, he patted his aching knee and hoped the smell of the liniment would be less noticeable with his pants on.

He grimaced as he limped out of the office in the direction of James Street.

The Hip Ching address was on Jackson Street, not far from Hing Hay Park in the old section of Chinatown. The building was dark, a six-story hulk that featured a pagoda facade above two large lion dog statues guarding the front door.

Jack and Alex sat in the car, a block away, watching the pouring rain usher in the Seattle dawn. No one appeared, and when it got light enough, Jack drove the car around a ten-block radius, checking out the area. The streets were still deserted. But Jack soon came to an alleyway off Weller, where he found what he was hoping for. The dark sedan that had carried the two men he’d fought with was parked halfway on the sidewalk. He saw the California plates clearly. Jack parked opposite the mouth of the narrow alley where he had a good view of the intersection as well. He walked across and checked out the dent on the rear fender. No doubt. When he came back to the car Alex rested her head against his good shoulder and they waited.

Jack knew Mona was involved in the killing of Uncle Four in New York, and that the elderly Hip Ching leader was connected to Paper Fan and the triad. She’d taken something, something important enough for them to jump into the wind after her. This was what it was all about.

Instinctively, he felt the woman was close at hand.

Alex ran into Chinatown and bought baos, lor bok go , lo mein, and four cups of black Chinese coffee, bound to keep them hyper. More people appeared on the streets: Chinatown folks going about their morning routines, students heading for school, office workers going to day jobs.