“Corner the market where?”
“The mining camps.” Starbuck lit a cigar, puffing grandly. “Leadville, Cripple Creek, four or five of the bigger camps. I'll make an absolute goddamned fortune!”
“Yeah?” O'Brien looked skeptical. “Last I heard, there wasn't any shortage of whores in the mining camps.”
Starbuck woofed a bellylaugh. “Mr. O'Brien, them miners are queer birds. They'll pay double for anything that speaks foreign or looks the least bit different. So I figure to give 'em a crack at something besides white women.”
“Like what?”
“China whores.”
“Wait a minute!” O'Brien said bluntly. “Are you saying Mattie sent you to see me about slant-eyes?”
“She sure did,” Starbuck acknowledged. “I don't know my ass from a brass bassoon about Chinamen. Never dealt with one in my life. She thought maybe you'd act as a go-between for me.”
“A middleman?”
“No, not exactly. I'll make my own deal, but I need someone to open the door. Way I hear it, them Chinamen won't traffic with just anybody when it comes to slave girls.”
“You plan to buy them outright, then?”
“For a fact,” Starbuck said with cheery vigor. “An even hundred.”
“A hundred?” O'Brien repeated, suddenly dumbstruck. “You mean to buy
one hundred
slave girls?”
“I like round numbers. Course, I'm not after just any girls.” Starbuck paused, admired the tip of his cigar. “They've got to be virgins.”
“Virgins!” O'Brien stared at him with a burlesque leer of disbelief. “You want a hundred
virgins?
”
Starbuck let the idea percolate a few moments. “All virginsâand the whole kit and caboodle ages twelve to sixteen.”
A smile formed at the corner of O'Brien's mouth, then broke into laughter. “By God, you think big, don't you? A hundred little China dolls!” He threw back his head and roared. “With their cherries intact, for Chrissake!”
Starbuck gave him a foolish grin. “Well, don't you see, them miners will really go for little girl whores, specially the innocent kind. By kicking things off with Chinee heathen virgins, I'll put the
other cathouses in the shade damn near overnight. After that, nobody'll be able to touch my operation.”
“Hell, I believe you!” O'Brien shook his head with admiration. “But you're talking about a shit-pot full of money. A hundred virgins won't come cheap.”
“No problem,” Starbuck said equably. “I'm loaded and willing to pay plenty, just so long as I get what I want.”
O'Brien eyed him craftily. “What about me? Here in Frisco, a go-between doesn't come cheap, either.”
Starbuck ventured a smile. “How does five percent strike you?”
“It gets my attention.” O'Brien shrugged noncommittally. “I'd listen a lot closer if you were to say ten percent.”
“One of the last things Mattie told me was that you wouldn't try to stiff me. You open the right door and you've got yourself a deal.”
There was a moment of weighing and deliberation. O'Brien thought it the most outlandish idea he'd ever heard. Yet that very oddity gave it a certain credibility. Nobody but a dimwitted fool would invent such a weird and grandiose story. While Harry Lovett was a smooth talker, he was clearly no simpleton, and everything about him reeked of money. O'Brien hadn't the vaguest notion of the asking price for a hundred slave-girl virgins. Whatever the amount, it would be steep, approaching the six-figure mark. A piece of any action that sweet was too tempting to resist.
“You're on,” he said at length. “I'll set up a meeting with the head Chink in Chinatown. His name's Fung Jing Toy.”
Starbuck flashed his gold tooth in a nutcracker grin. He looked pleased as punch and it was no act. Today was only a first step, but his instinct hadn't played him false.
Denny O'Brien had swallowed the bait whole.
Chinatown was a world apart.
Upon crossing the intersection of Dupont and Washington, the white man's domain abruptly ended. From there, as though transported backward in time, the outsider had a sense of having entered Old Cathay. An ancient culture, unchanged for thousands of years, made only surface concessions to the blue-eyed white devils. Underneath, the old ways still existed.
In the lowering dusk, Starbuck walked along Washington Street. His appointment with Fung Jing Toy was for seven oâclock. All afternoon messages had passed back and forth between the Chinatown vice lord and Denny O'Brien. The working arrangement between them was apparently civil, but larded with distrust and an element of rivalry. Fung's initial response, relayed by High Spade McQueen, had expressed cautious interest. Then, as the negotiations progressed, further information had been requested
with respect to Harry Lovett's background. Finally, with O'Brien's assurance that the slave girls were intended for Colorado brothels, the vice lord acceded. Late that afternoon, a time had been set for the meeting.
Starbuck, meanwhile, was pumping Denny O'Brien. He'd spent the afternoon with the Barbary Coast boss, still play-acting the glib and garrulous con man turned whoremaster. His questions were reasonable, and framed in a manner that made O'Brien his ally, something of a conspirator. To dicker successfully for the slave girls, he explained, he needed some general idea as to whom he was dealing with and what sort of reception he might expect. O'Brien, who evidenced no great charity toward Chinatown's vice lord, was only too happy to oblige. He spoke at length, and with considerable authority, on Fung's rise to power. What he had to say was revealing, and recounted with a certain grudging admiration. He described a man of obsessive ambition and savage methods.
Fung Jing Toy had immigrated to America at the age of five. As a child he witnessed the early tong wars on the streets of Chinatown, supporting himself as an apprentice to a shoemaker. A quick learner, ever willing to bend the rules, he displayed a compulsive drive to get ahead. At twenty-one, cloaked by a lily-white front, he began manufacturing shoes under the name of J. C. Peters & Company. The firm, however, was merely a legitimate base for criminal intrigue. He soon expanded into fan-tan parlors,
opium smuggling, and prostitution. All the while, his horizons continued to broaden.
Early in 1876, Fung seized power of the Sum Yop tong. His next move, an open challenge to the other tong leaders, seemed suicidal. His gang began highjacking shipments of slave girls and assorted contraband being smuggled into San Francisco by the opposing factions. With little regard for human life, he provoked the bloodiest street war in Chinatown's history. Over a period of four years, his
boo how doy
hatchet men butchered more than a hundred of their rivals. By 1880, the other tongs were whipped into submission. A truce conference was convened, and Fung emerged the absolute ruler of Chinatown.
Since then, he had consolidated his power with ruthless efficiency. Once a week, his henchmen collected a percentage of gross receipts from all vice enterprises. Those who welched, or attempted to hold out, were swiftly raided by the police. Or in extreme circumstances, they were murdered as an object lesson. All legitimate businesses, importers and merchants alike, were required to pay weekly tribute for protection. The alternative was an unexplained fire, or a midnight visit from a squad of hatchet men. The slave girl trade, once an open market, was now Fung's province alone. Only those who obtained his sanction were allowed to traffic in human cargo.
A traditionalist, Fung still observed the old customs. He dressed like his forefathers, affected humility, and lived in a modest house on Washington
Street. He was a student of art and ancient scrolls, and his own poetry was said to contain such subtle nuances that it could not be translated into English. A playwright as well, he wrote dramas which were performed at the Chinese Theater on Jackson Street. According to rumor, he subsidized the theater and was a patron to those who displayed artistic merit.
Yet, for all his benevolent mannerisms, he had the killer instinct of a cobra and a barbaric sense of survival. Assassination by other tong leaders was an ever-present danger, and his personal living quarters were virtually impregnable. The barred steel door, leading into a suite of rooms without windows, was guarded by a pair of Tibetan mastiffs. At all times, night and day, he was also accompanied by
two boo
how doy
hatchet men. Not surprisingly, his death was widely contemplated but rarely attempted.
Starbuck was intrigued by the man. From all he'd been told, Fung was an enigma, the inscrutable Oriental of legend. A vicious killer who wrote poetry and performed masterfully on the zither. A philanthropist who traded in slave girls and extorted tribute from his own countrymen. A throwback to the warlords of old, at once civilized and savage. In short, a man of many parts, and worth meeting.
Chinatown itself seemed no less a paradox. Walking along Washington, Starbuck thought to himself that it was actually a city within a city. One big tenement, it was dirty and overcrowded, squalid and diseased. The people lived in cellars and back-alley rabbit warrens, musty wooden cubicles. The women
were dressed in black pantaloons and long smocks, and the men, their hair braided in pigtails, wore floppy jackets and baggy pajama pants. Most spoke only the dialect of their native land, and those who could converse with a Westerner resorted to pidgin English that was all but incomprehensible. A stranger asking directions might as well have talked to a deaf mute.
Washington Street, otherwise known as the Street of the Thousand Lanterns, teemed with people. The sweet smell of opium and the stench of sweaty bodies intermingled in an oppressive odor. The shops and stores, displaying their wares, added to the rank aroma. Dried sea horses and pickled squid were heaped in a herbalist's window. A grocer's storefront exhibited row upon row of plucked chickens and skinned ducks, dangling from overhead beams. Sidewalk bins overflowed with winter melons and rotting vegetables, and a fish peddler operated from an open cart on the corner. Amid the din of commerce, there was human barter, as well.
Crib whores, imprisoned behind barred windows, talked up their trade. The lowest form of slave girls, they wore only short blouses, naked from the waist down. Chinese men were addressed in the native tongue, and offered unknown splendors at reduced rates. White men, thought to be ignorant and lavish spenders, brought on a frantic singsong chant.
“Chinee girl velly nice! Looksee two bits, feelee floor bits. Doee only six bits!”
Hurrying past, Starbuck was reminded that the
plumbing of Oriental women was thought to be different from that of white women. To the uninitiated, it was commonly believed that their private parts went east-west instead of north-south. The debate, actively fostered by the Chinese, had produced a thriving, if somewhat bizarre, sideline to the oldest profession. A curious customer could have a looksee for two bits, a mere twenty-five cents. Or if he cared to check out the plumbing personally, he could have a feelee for four bits. That served to settle the east-west question, and often led to an additional sale. For another quarter, a total of six bits, he could actually doee. Quick as a wink, for the crib girls were also velly fast, all doubt was then removed.
Starbuck was something of a novice himself. He'd talked countless girls, from schoolmarms to saloon tarts, out of their drawers and into bed. Yet he had never been in the sack with an Oriental woman. He knew the east-west question was sheer tomfoolery, but he thought it might be worth a try while he was in Frisco. Whichever direction the plumbing ran, it would be worth the price of admission. A little doee now and then kept a man from going stale.
A couple of minutes before seven, Starbuck located Fung's house. As he'd been told, it was the only three-story building in all of Chinatown that wasn't swarming with a hundred or more occupants. He rapped on the door and almost instantly it swung open. A servant bowed him inside, quickly closing and bolting the door. Without a word, the man turned and walked along a central hallway.
Starbuck followed. He checked left and right, naturally curious about the inside of a Chinese home. Yet there was little to see; the rooms off the corridor were dark; except for dim candles and several large vases, the hall itself was bare. He had the sense of being watched, which was reinforced by the servant's casual manner. He wondered how many hatchet men silently waited in the darkened rooms.
At the end of the hallway, the servant stopped and bowed him through a door. Stepping onto a small landing, Starbuck saw a lighted staircase leading to the cellar. He went down the stairs, which turned sharply at the bottom, and emerged in an underground chamber. One look and he understood immediately why Chinatown's vice lord still survived.
The chamber ran the width of the house. Ornate candle fixtures were attached to the walls, and a steel door stood opposite the staircase. Before the door, chained to the wall, were two beasts that vaguely resembled dogs. Huge as tigers, the mastiffs looked as though they would happily devour a man for breakfast. The dogs snarled in unison, and showed him fangs the size of tusks. He remained very still.
A Chinaman appeared in the doorway. At his command, the mastiffs dropped to the floor, silent but watchful. Another man came through the door and paused, hands stuffed up his sleeves. Tall men, muscular and hard-faced, they both wore broadbrimmed flat hats, their hair twisted in long queues. Their robes were black and their rubber-soled shoes made every movement silent as a whisper. From the
look of them, there was a hatchet up every sleeve.
Starbuck thought he'd never seen men who so thoroughly fitted the part of assassins. The first one expertly patted him down, and removed the Colt Lightning from his shoulder holster. The hideout gun in his boot top went undetected, and knowing it was there gave him some degree of comfort. Still, even though he was armed, he warned himself to play it fast and loose. A bold front and quick wits were the key to leaving the chamber alive.
The hatchet man in the doorway moved aside and motioned him through. Starbuck gingerly stepped past the mastiffs and entered a spacious room. Spartan as a monk's cell, the room was furnished with floor cushions and a low teakwood table. To his immediate left was another steel door, which he assumed led to the living quarters. The hatchet men took up positions directly behind him, one on either side of the entranceway. He needed no reminder that it was also the only way out.
The side door opened and Fung Jing Toy whisked into the room. He wore a silk mandarin gown and a black skullcap. A slender man, with a long mustache and skin the texture of parchment, his bearing was that of someone who spends his life remote from the world of people. His eyes were impersonal.
“Mr. Lovett.” His head dipped in a bow. “Please be seated.”
“Thank you kindly.”
Starbuck lowered himself onto one of the cushions. His legs were too long to fit under the table,
and he awkwardly twisted around sideways. Fung moved to the opposite side of the table and took a seat, legs crossed. A moment passed; then he nodded with grave courtesy and spoke in a reedy voice.
“I am told this is your first visit to our city.”
“That's a fact. Got in late this morning.”
“Have your expectations been fulfilled?”
“Well ⦔ Starbuck smiled lamely. “I've been pretty busy. Haven't had much time to catch the sights.”
“A situation not without remedy. You must allow us to show you something of Little China during your stay.”
“Little China?”
“A colloquial expression,” Fung said with a patronizing smile. “Your people call it Chinatown. We find our own name more suitable.”
Starbuck realized the vice lord's smile was closer to a grimace. A cold rictus that touched his lips but never his eyes. The serpentine charm and oily manner also failed to hide the hauteur in his voice, the deep arrogance. Still, there was no faulting the man's command of English. He spoke with only a slight accent, and he used three-dollar words. Starbuck thought “colloquial” was a real piss-cutter. He made a mental note to look it up in the dictionary.
“Now, as to business,” Fung went on blandly. “Denny O'Brien informs me that you are interested in a purchase of some magnitude.”
“All depends,” Starbuck said tentatively. “The
merchandise would have to be prime stuff, pick of the litter.”
“Ah, yes.” Fung permitted himself an ironic glance. “Pick of the litter meaning virgin girls, is it not so?”
“Nothing less,” Starbuck affirmed. “Virgins will be the come-on, if you get my drift. I'll use 'em to start the operation off in real style.”
Fung gave him a thoughtful stare. “I believe you plan to open several houses, all at the same time. To one of humble aspirations, that seems a grand and daring concept.”
Starbuck beamed like a trained bear. “I think big and I'm willing to put my money where my mouth is. Four or five housesâall stocked with virginsâit'll flat knock their eyes out! No way it'll fail, and there's the God's own truth.”
Fung studied his nails. “An ancient proverb advises us that truth wears many faces.” He suddenly looked up, eyes gleaming icons. “I understand you are a man of some influence in the Colorado mining camps?”