Dim Sum Asylum(21)
Six
THE ROOF access from Wang Shi spat us out into the middle of a large span stretching over a few streets, jogging across the nested buildings with several arched bridges connecting to other rooftop islands. Finding the shrine god in this gōngyù was going to be a mess.
Like many of Chinatown’s buildings, the two-story brick square housing the Wang Shi Benevolent Society hosted one of Chinatown’s most famous features, a gōngyù, a ramshackle rooftop ghetto reminiscent of city walls in Kowloon. Connected by bridges, the gōngyù spanned many of Chinatown’s taller structures, often so thickly built they blocked the sun from getting to the street below.
Several wide bridges connected the rooftop to the gōngyù directly across from it, which wasn’t something I wanted to deal with. If the statue made it to one of the bridges, we were more cooked than the ducks hanging in the restaurant across from where I lived. It was going to be bad enough hunting through the narrow spaces between the shelters. The gōngyù was typical, a jigsaw puzzle of stacked rooftop dwellings stitched out of scrap material, becoming a foundation for others to build on. From the looks of things, the tight maze of alleys below were covered by interconnecting residences, a crazy quilt of colors, building materials, and angles.
With night almost on the city and dark clouds rolling in, the tight walkways between the rows were nearly pitch-black. Small dots of light penetrated the dimness, cast off from bare windows or cracked-open doors. The place smelled of people, both human and fae, with a lingering overlay of bird shit from either pigeons or rooftop chickens kept in coops beside their owners’ doors.
“There’s only one access point onto this span.” Leonard pointed to a wide cobbled-together bridge a few buildings down. “Thing moves fast, but is it smart enough to head over there? How intelligent is it? Do you have any idea?”
“Cursed relics aren’t necessarily smart, but they’re kind of like chickens. They know what an axe looks like.” I stepped around a toppled tricycle, its purple handlebar tassels faded to gray from the sun. “Go left. I’ll take right. Let’s hug the outside and see if we can spot it.”
A few strides took me into the maze, and the rooftop village swallowed me up whole. Keeping my breathing shallow, I listened to the area around me. Normal sounds echoed between the tight buildings, drops of family life coming down like rain. A few feet down, a window was open, and someone was singing, an old operatic tune about the Monkey King.
Within a few minutes of twisting and turning down tight corridors with not a sight of anyone else, I heard a footfall, then a shuffling as someone behind me skidded to a stop. It was too light a weight to be Leonard, and in the warren of a gōngyù, I couldn’t count on it being someone friendly. For all I knew, the old fae from Wang Shi gave in to his lust and wanted a pair of badges to hang from his earlobes. He’d survived triad wars, probably slipping out from between cop fingers for longer than anyone remembered. When I got back to the station, the Violent Crimes squad and I were going to have a serious talk about not knowing there was a red-starred winged demon squatting in my territory.
Pretending to ignore the footsteps behind me, I continued on my way and pulled my Glock from its holster. A quick two-step jog around a corner hid me from view. The deep shadows camouflaged my gun, its long black shape hidden by pressing it against my leg, and I waited to see what would come out of the dim light.
It was definitely a fae, just not the bloodthirsty killer we’d left downstairs.
“Why you here?” An older Okinawan fae woman shuffled into the light. Her eyes gleamed, fractured pearls and starlight beneath a furrowed brow. “You are police, yes? With that badge?”
Wearing neon-green plastic house slippers and a pink-flowered housecoat, the elderly woman was a fierce defender of her gōngyù, brandishing a thick bamboo pole. Her hair was nearly pure white, pulled up into a skewed bun. Her round gossamer butterfly wings sparkled opal, even in the dim light, and she held them firm, not a quiver of nervousness in her proud set shoulders.
“Arcane Crimes. We’re looking for a shrine god, cursed.” I gave a quick description of the statue, leaving out the bit about its elephant testicles. “Have you seen—?”
“Holy motherfucking Hells! What is—Kami! Where are you? There’s a damned—” The broken granite tones of an old man punched through the street sounds coming up from the city. “Oh God, what the Hell?”
In the gōngyù’s tangle, it was difficult to tell where the shouting was coming from, but the woman apparently knew because she scurried away, her pole raised over her shoulder as if a battle awaited her. Knowing the lascivious nature of the statue’s curse, I was more worried for her heart surviving the rush of its presence than any damage it could do.
Luckily, I could outrun an old woman.
Maybe.
“Leonard, over here!” I bolted down the walk, heading toward the shanty she was aiming for. I heard nothing back from him, but it was a long shot he’d heard me in the first place. Or if he had, he probably wouldn’t be able to find me until I was choking the shit out of our ceramic nemesis. “Damn it. Where the Hell is my partner?”
With my luck, he’d somehow ended up pitched over the side of the building and Gaines would have my ass for losing my partner on the first day.
Lights blinked on around us, precious resources for anyone living off the grid in the gōngyù, but things greater than poverty lurked in the shadows. Built out of old wooden garage doors, the old lady’s shack was topped with mismatched tin sheets for a roof, and its cutout windows were sealed with agriculture tarp to keep the heat and bugs out. Someone with an optimistic bent decided the structure needed a coat of orchid paint, and it’d been haphazardly slapped on, too thin to mask the former doors’ beige and moss-green planks. A stovepipe cut up through a corner of the roof, silver duct tape sealing off the hole to protect it from rain. A thin thread of smoke wormed its way out of the cap, worrying me.