The Chinatown Death Cloud Peril Read online

  SIMON & SCHUSTER

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  1230 Avenue of the Americas

  New York, NY 10020

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2006 by Paul Malmont

  All rights reserved, including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form.

  SIMON & SCHUSTER and colophon are registered trademarks of Simon & Schuster, Inc.

  DESIGNED BY LAUREN SIMONETTI

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Malmont, Paul.

  The Chinatown death cloud peril / Paul Malmont.

  p. cm.

  1. Gibson, Walter Brown, 1897–—Fiction. 2. Dent, Lester, 1904–1959—Fiction.

  3. Authors, American—20th century—Fiction. I. Title.

  PS3613.A457C47 2006

  813’.6—dc22 2006042205

  ISBN-13: 978-0-7432-9330-3

  ISBN-10: 0-7432-9330-4

  Visit us on the World Wide Web:

  http://www.SimonSays.com

  To my son, Nathaniel,

  for getting me up early all those mornings so I could write this

  and bearing with me while I did

  To my wife, Audrey,

  for my sons, and for so many other wonderful ways you have shared

  your life with me

  To Forrest Barrett

  and

  William Putch,

  old teachers gone but never forgotten

  My little son is crying out for nourishment—

  O Alice, Alice, what shall I do?

  —Edgar Rice Burroughs

  We know how Gods are made.

  —Jack London

  Introduction

  IT IS called the Pulp Era.

  An era is like a book in that it has a title, its own unique exposition, characters, a beginning, a middle, an ending, a theme, and maybe a moral. And just as heroes and villains in a book do not realize they are in a story, so you cannot know the title or themes of the time in which you live. You may think you know. You may even hope to contribute to the story line, or be a witness to the ending. But even if you did, you would not know. Only after those days have passed can one discern the form, voices, and meaning of those days. Then the era can be given a title because titles are how we refer to times passed and stories told. The Pulp Era.

  In other times and places—Imperial China, for example—an emperor could declare his own era while he was living in it. When Li Shimin, Emperor of the Temple and Library, decided that China was in a period of divine richness, then from that day on everyone was living in the Divine Richness Era. At least until the next emperor decreed the dawning of a new era.

  In China this prerogative was considered a literary expression on the part of the emperor. The known world, after all, was his, and he could tell his story about it as he saw fit. As this known world is mine to tell about as I see fit. I am the Emperor of the Light and Darkness, and this is the Pulp Era.

  You may recognize some of the heroes and villains of this era, but recognizing a vaguely familiar face is not the same as rediscovering a long-lost friend. I will introduce you to some old friends of mine, and make their days come alive again. I will let their voices speak and let their hearts fill with life one more time. An era, like a book, can be forgotten. Days, like pages, crumble into dust. Stories, like memories, fade away.

  In this account I will offer you these lives, their stories, their shared events, that time with as much truth as they deserve. But saying that I will tell the truth about them is not the same as saying that I will tell you truth. In order to exercise my imperial prerogative I have to let shadows fall between fact and fiction. These friends, several of whom were writers, would have been among the first to remind me to never let the facts get in the way of a good story, and so I will not. The reader will determine what is truth and what is fiction.

  In the end it’s just a story.

  But if you ask me, it’s all true.

  Issue 1:

  Curse of the

  Golden Vulture

  Episode One

  “YOU THINK life can’t be like the pulps?” Walter Gibson asked the other man. “Let me tell you a story. You tell me where real ends and pulp begins.” The cigarette in his left hand suddenly disappeared.

  The young man, whose most distinguishing characteristic, in spite of his stocky build and shock of red hair, was his powerfully forward-thrusted jaw, blinked in mild surprise at the magic trick, then nodded agreeably. “All right,” Ron Hubbard said.

  The cigarette, a filterless Chesterfield, reappeared in Gibson’s right hand. He took a long sip from his whiskey and washed it down with a sip of beer and an involuntary shudder. He was getting drunk and it was too early. He knew it. He didn’t even want to be here tonight. Well, he did want to be in the White Horse Tavern drinking. But he didn’t want to be here drinking with the youthful and ambitious president of the American Fiction Guild, who had been hectoring him relentlessly to speak about his writing at the weekly gathering of pulp mag writers in the Grand Salon of the old Hotel Knickerbocker. John Nanovic, his ed at Street & Smith, had begged, pleaded, and in the end agreed to pay for a few of this evening’s drinks if he would agree to do it. Nanovic had told Gibson that it was important for him, as the number one bestselling mag writer in America, to take an interest in the new writers, the young writers. To help groom them. Gibson felt that what Nanovic really wanted him to do was to find his successor in case he stumbled in front of a trolley car some drunken evening. Ultimately he had to admit that it was a fair concern for an editor to have about him.

  So, here he was having drinks with Lafayette Ron Hubbard, a writer of moderately popular but pedestrian (in Gibson’s opinion) westerns, and at twenty-five, fifteen years younger than he. One of the new writers. One of the young ones. They were seated at a small table next to the bar and treating themselves to waiter service. Hubbard was one of those writers who acted like they really cared about writing and had launched into a theory that the sort of adventure pulp Gibson wrote was somehow less valid than the westerns and two-fisted tales he wrote because at least his stories were based on history or reality.

  Gibson knew the kid was impressed by him. Hubbard had practically been begging him for a sit-down for weeks. Every now and then Gibson would see Hubbard looking around the saloon as if he could recognize somebody he knew who might come over and interrupt the conversation. If that had happened, he might then have the opportunity to say to them, “Excuse me, but can’t you see I’m having drinks with Walter Gibson? That’s right, the guy who writes The Shadow Magazine. Well, I know The Shadow byline is Maxwell Grant, but that’s a company name, a Street & Smith name. Trust me. Walter Gibson is Maxwell Grant. Walter Gibson writes The Shadow Magazine. We’re just talking about writing.” But he recognized no one and no one recognized him.

  Gibson had seen several writers that he knew come through already; the Street & Smith building was just up the road at Fifteenth and Seventh, and the tavern was popular with writers who had just been roughed up by eds and by the eds who had applied the beating. George Bruce, the air-ace writer, had been and gone; Elmer Smith, the rocket jock, and Norvell Page, the fright guy, were still drinking in a corner. But he hadn’t invited either to join them. As a rule Gibson didn’t like other mag writers; he found them too self-denigrating yet self-important at the same time. He much preferred the company of the magicians whose books and articles he often ghosted.

  He kind of liked Hu
bbard, though. The kid was eager and acted like he thought his shit smelled like roses, a confidence most other writers lacked. In a one-draft world a man had to believe that every word he wrote was right. Gibson knew he had quickly muscled out old Arthur Brooks, a man Gibson had no use for whatsoever, who as head of the Guild had run the organization as a lazy gentlemen’s social club. Hubbard had plans for the Guild, but Gibson didn’t really care to know what they were. He knew that Hubbard had lived in New York for several years a while back with a wife and a daughter, and that they had all moved back to Washington State for a while, and that he had left them behind in Washington and come back to New York alone just a few months ago. Gibson could only venture a guess why; the Depression had made it so that sometimes a man couldn’t afford to bring his family with him when he went looking for work. But the last thing Gibson wanted to do was ask another man why he had left his wife and child.

  “What’s real? What’s pulp? Right, Ron?” He unbuttoned his collar and loosened his tie knot. “Okay. Here’s a story. For the sake of argument, let’s call it the Tale of the Sweet Flower War. This is a story filled with blood and cruelty and fear and mystery and love and passion and vengeance and villains,” he said. “It began with the arrival of a strange mist which rolled in from the harbor and seemed to fill the streets of Chinatown. Those who were superstitious felt it was the cloak of death. Those who weren’t superstitious, and their numbers were few, only felt it was another reason to hate living here.” Walter spoke rapidly; the hard emphasis of his consonants tended to resemble a staccato drumbeat, and his fingers twitched mildly as he spoke, involuntarily typing his words onto the table or against his leg or into the air as fast as he spoke them. Gibson’s energy always seemed to keep him in motion. His friend Harry Houdini had once told him he seemed to vibrate, even when he was standing still.

  “Here Chinatown? Or San Francisco’s?” Hubbard asked with a vaguely worldly air that implied he had traveled some in his time and knew both intimately: a warning to Gibson that he’d better have his facts straight.

  “New York. Here.” The tone of Gibson’s voice let Hubbard know not to interrupt the storytelling again unless it was something important. “The deadly fog rolled over the tiny enclave thirty years ago during the great tong wars, when the red flag of war flew over the tallest building in Chinatown.”

  “Tong?” Hubbard made the same mistake again and winced a little, knowing that Gibson’s next breath would have explained it.

  “Ancient organizations with mysterious roots going way back in Chinese history. Brutal, cruel, and sadistic. Mostly they imported opium, slave girls, and indentured workers from China.

  “In 1909, the year of the menacing mist, the biggest tong in America was the On Leong group. They controlled everything in the matter of things Chinese from Frisco to New York. There were other tongs around at the time, but the only serious rivals were the Hip Sing. Their boss was a fella about your age, everyone knew him as Mock Duck, and he had a habit, when he got into a brawl, of whipping out two pistols, closing his eyes, and firing blindly until everyone was dead or running for their lives. You can laugh if you want, but legend had it that this was a very effective street-fighting technique.

  “Well, those that said that something sinister would emerge from the shadow which had fallen over Chinatown were right. One day Sweet Flower came to town. Now she was, by all accounts, a beautiful and delicate virgin. She had remarkable long, slender fingers and could play a variety of Chinese instruments with skill and grace. A slave, of course, smuggled in by a slaver and probably destined for a life of prostitution. But one of the On Leong leaders saw her, fell in love with her, and he had his men steal her from the slaver. Or rescue her, if you prefer. And, he married her. She was sixteen, and on her wedding night he possessed her in every way that a man can possess a woman. And she was happy with her station in life.

  “At first, all the slaver wanted was proper restitution for his loss. But the On Leong man refused to pay for what he considered to be true love. He told the slaver to go to hell. The slaver went to another tong, the Hip Sing. A truce was declared and the two parties sat down for formal negotiations. Now this was at a time when the tong fighters, the hatchet men, the boo how doy, were killing each other at the rate of two or three a week. So for these two tongs to actually sit down together in the same room and hold a peaceful discussion…” He made a futile gesture. “Chinatown did not hold its collective breath.”

  “The negotiations did not go well for the Hip Sing. Once again, they were told in no uncertain terms where they and their demands could go. All things considered, it’s pretty remarkable that any man walked out of the tearoom alive that day. That night, however, was a different story. While her husband slept, someone broke into their house and cut off each and every one of Sweet Flower’s slender and delicate little fingers.”

  “Mock Duck?”

  The White Horse Tavern served its own blend of scotch, and each bottle was topped by a cork with a white tin horse rearing up. There was a cork on their table now; it was usually given to the customer who had put the polish on a bottle, and he had, several drinks ago. Gibson picked it up now, idly playing with it.

  “Maybe. It was probably the vile slaver. And, in fact, Mock Duck delivered him over to the On Leong for whatever justice they chose to administer. But it wasn’t enough and over the next couple of months, over fifty men from both sides were killed, and hundreds more were crippled or maimed in the fighting. Now what’s really incredible about this is that we’re talking about a neighborhood that takes up maybe a square mile and is made up of only a dozen or so streets. So relatively, it’s a truly gruesome amount of men carving each other up.”

  “Hundreds! C’mon! That’s pulp.”

  Gibson cleared his throat. “In those days the center of Chinese social life was the old Chinese Theater. It’s still there; you can go down and see it for yourself. It’s all boarded up now.

  “At the time of the Sweet Flower War there was a famous comedian named Ah Hoon. Famous among the Chinese. An ugly clown of a man. Loyal to the On Leong. His grand finale was, and this supposedly laid them in the aisles, an impersonation of Mock Duck firing his guns blindly until he would roll over, ass over teakettle. Guess you had to be there, right? That’s what the Hip Sing thought too. They were losing this war badly and now they were being made fun of in public by a clown. Word went out that Ah Hoon was a dead man and he would never see the sun rise after his next performance.

  “Even though City Hall never went out of its way to keep one Chinaman from killing another, the rising tide of blood was starting to offend the sensibilities of the rest of the city. This bald-faced death threat was just the opportunity the cops had been looking for to show that they could handle a few uppity Chinese. That night they turned up at the theater in force. There were probably more Irish in Chinatown altogether that night than there were in all the bars in Brooklyn. The chief of police himself escorted Ah Hoon from his apartment to the theater. I imagine a load of innocent Chinese men took a whopping nightstick to the head for looking this way or that to some cop’s dislike, but there was going to be law and order on Doyers Street.

  “Poor Ah Hoon didn’t even want to do his act that night! When he heard he was a marked man, he wanted to take the next train out of town, but the cops and the On Leong made him take the stage that night. They had something to prove. He didn’t. But he waited in the wings and sweated through the acrobats leaping over each other. He agonized through the singer’s songs, trying to peer into the darkness to see where the bullet or knife or hatchet was going to come from. He probably came close to having a heart attack every time the gas lamps sputtered and popped downstage. But all the time the cops and the On Leong men reassured him that all would be well. He was protected. He would live.

  “Can you imagine anyone having a better reason to have stage fright than poor Ah Hoon? He walked out onstage that night and the first person he saw front and center was Mock Duck
, grinning up at him. But there were the American police to the left and right of his mortal enemy. Ah Hoon took a deep breath, wished he were in a faraway place, and dove into his act. He didn’t change a word and by all accounts he was very, very funny that night. Even Mock Duck laughed at the impersonation. When it was time for the curtain call, the police swept him offstage before his first bow and an encore was out of the question. The point had been made: Ah Hoon had survived the performance.

  “Well, the On Leong men went wild that night. Fireworks exploded in the sky over Chinatown, their brightness dimmed somewhat by the eerie fog. Hip Sing men were burned in effigy and humiliated in songs and jeers. To the On Leong men, the survival of Ah Hoon had proven that the Hip Sing were no longer the threat they had once posed and that the war was won. Meanwhile the cops hustled Ah Hoon to a cheap room in a cheap hotel next to the theater. They had rented it just to ensure that nothing would happen to tarnish their reputation as protectors of the weak and innocent and funny.

  “The apartment had just one room. Everyone on the floor used the same washroom at the far end of the hall. The other apartments along the hall had been cleared of occupants for the night. Didn’t matter if they had paid in advance, lived there for years, or had no place else to go. They were rousted. There were no closets in the room, but several small cupboards. There was a bed. There was one window, but it had been jammed into a stuck position for years. A two-inch gap let a little air into the stuffy room, but the window could be neither forced open wider nor lowered more. Three stories down was a dead-end alleyway barely the width of a broad-shouldered man. Three cops were positioned at its mouth, preventing any entrance. Opposite the window, about three feet away, was the solid brick wall of a building. That particular side was unmarred by a single door or window, featureless and rising another four stories beyond Ah Hoon’s floor. Cops on foot and horseback blocked the front and back entrance to the hotel. Ten officers stood in the hallway outside Ah Hoon’s room. A big Swede cop of impeccable moral fiber, at least of no discernible vice, was placed before Ah Hoon’s door.