Don’t jump to conclusions. Conclusions bite you in the ass.
CHINATOWN. ROCKY RASCAL HATED CHINATOWN. If it wasn’t the Tongs, it was the Triads. If it wasn’t the Triads, it was the Wah Ching. If it wasn’t the Wah Ching, it was the white developers looking to cash in on real estate, banking, and whatever grift remained for the taking.
Rocky avoided Chinatown like he avoided a whorehouse if he wasn’t carrying a condom. Only there was no condom for Chinatown. Whatever you touched transmitted a disease. The Chinese might consider him a white racist. He thought of himself as white. No noticeable difference in the 1950s. If it were up to him, he’d pave over Chinatown and put up a parking lot.
“Personally, I’d rather be at Candlestick Park with a beer and a dog.” He spoke to the body lying next to the toe of his shoe on a parquet floor with mahjong tiles scattered around him. A winning hand, all circles—a chow, three pongs, and eyes. “In fact, that’s where you’d find me right now if my partner Jock Gits wasn’t losing our money at the craps tables in Vegas.”
Rocky avoided Chinatown like he avoided a whorehouse if he wasn’t carrying a condom. Only there was no condom for Chinatown. Whatever you touched transmitted a disease.
He toed the corpse. Moses Crust. Millionaire, developer, and world class swindler. Scammed two million from the city on a new city hall that crumbled to dust after the next earthquake. His aqueduct cracked and drained all the water into the dirt beneath. No jail time. He successfully sued the city for libel when they arrested him.
Rocky kneeled to examine the wounds. “What were you doing in a Chinatown apartment above a Chinese Restaurant that serves Chow Mein at $5 a plate, and charges $3 for noodles? Probably putting up a skirt, I’d guess. A pissed off skirt, considering what she did to you.”
Confirming his suspicions, a woman’s body slumped in the armchair bathed in diffused August sunlight seeping through the muslin shades. In the distance, a horn sounded from the bay. Had to be a skirt. Probably caught him cheating on his wife with the dead broad instead of cheating on his wife with her.
So pissed off—skirt or not—that Crust’s body sported four bullet holes and more than a dozen stabbing wounds. Rocky stood and surveilled the room. “Had to be a skirt. A man that pissed off would’ve blown up that supercharged Auburn speedster parked outside.” Rocky rarely conversed with corpses, but today he felt exceptionally gregarious. He’d lost three grand investing in bonds for the aqueduct that Crust never repaid, and felt a small measure of justice.
Rocky stood and surveilled the room. “Had to be a skirt. A man that pissed off would’ve blown up that supercharged Auburn speedster parked outside.”
The buffet against the wall jiggled. Too much of a jiggle for a passing rat or cat. He reached for his revolver and backed carefully toward the buffet, hoping not to reveal his discovery to whoever hid between the backboard and the wall. He carefully reached behind the glass case and scooted the buffet to the side. “Gotcha.”
Hiding in the narrow space, he found a skirt, as he’d expected. Petite. Maybe even petite light. He knew her from the society pages. Kate Crust, Crust’s granddaughter. Engaged to three different society bachelors and dumping everyone for the next bachelor to offer her a ring.
The gun still smoked in her right hand, and her left clutched a bloody carving knife. Rocky lit a Camel, the smoke from his cigarette mingling with the smoke from her gun barrel like a couple dancing among the dust motes in the diffused light. “I think I know this one.”
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