Dim Sum Asylum(30)
Trent was going to have the worst of it. Jackson was a one-way street, and he’d parked on the right, closer to where we needed to go but leaving the driver’s side on the road. He swore when the wind caught his jacket. Then another molten pour of anger—in Polish, I thought—followed when he tried to dash around the car only to stumble over the curb.
It was like trying to herd drunken turkeys.
Chinatown was built for the rain and fog, a perpetual grayness San Francisco liked to cover itself in nearly every month of the year. Summers were a shock test of boiling and ice, while winters were simply a glacial wonderland of sludge and bad traffic. It’s what I loved the most about Chinatown. I didn’t have to drive if I didn’t want to, and there were nooks and crannies full of dangerous, glorious things. And now one was full of a tall, broad-shouldered blond man who didn’t have the sense to get out of the rain.
The Southern Pier Gate dragon was already awake—or at least grumbling about the weather. She was a cranky lizard, and her sonorous rumbles rolled through the streets, a somber bass auditory fog deepening with every angry cough. Her mood ruffled a pleasure of mock-pixies nesting under the eave of a shop front. They took off, tiny balls of gold and fury dodging the raindrops in a metallic ribbon of chitters and spits. They curved over a lit billboard at the end of the block, wreathing the illuminated geisha trying to sell me a bowl of what looked like squid ink ice cream, and a piece of the building moved. The gargoyle’s stony beak and a quick flash of its red eyes, and a triangular chunk of the ribbon was gone. A few yards away, the remaining bugs reformed into a protective swarm, then winked out, burrowing into a crack in a wall.
“Under here, you fucking idiot.” I was about to reach out and pull him under the creaky green awning covering a closed hair salon when Trent stepped in close. “Trying to drown yourself?”
Heat rolled off his body, wafts of steam rising from his thick charcoal peacoat. There wasn’t enough room for us to both fit under the cover, but we tried. He snugged up against me and shook off as much of the rain as he could.
Shifty-eyed people on the street keenly watched us huddle under the canvas. There was no mistaking what Trent was. Everything about him screamed badge, gun, and authority. He’d be shit useless undercover. But I had the feeling the rapid flick of his eyes caught everything around us, even if he probably didn’t understand half of what he was looking at—but he’d learn. Trent was sharp, a bit too sharp sometimes, and I once again wondered who Gaines had hooked me up with: a cop or some paramilitary operative biding his time until SWAT grew a tank big enough to fit him.
“I was trying not to fall into the sewer,” he growled, pulling his attention off the street and onto me. “Shit, I’m soaked through. Where is this place you’re looking for? Far?”
“We’ve only got to sprint up the alleyway. If you time it right, you can dodge most of it.” He wore cologne. I did not need to know that. I didn’t need to know my partner scented himself with vanilla and grapefruit before getting dressed in the morning, so I filed the scent under Things to Forget in my brain. My mind promptly took it out and recycled it, tickling my belly with a too familiar curl of want.
“Let’s just get to work. Sooner we get inside, the dryer I get.”
“One of the netsuke victims—Peter Wong—had a noodle factory down this way. The beat cop got a witness stating he spotted something small running under the door to the victim’s office. Next thing they know, they hear Wong gurgling, and when they break the door down to get in, they find him dead with a fist-sized carved ball lodged in his throat.” Of the victims, Wong looked the most promising to chase down, mostly because of the potential witness and that the medics tried to trach him, only to find the movement in his throat was a piece of wiggling stone. “I want to talk to Wong’s people first because he went to the same temple as the missing woman, Shelly Chan. She was looking for a statuary token when she disappeared, so I’m thinking a connection between her, Wong, and the fertility shrine god.”
“Look… before we go… before this goes any further, I’ve got to talk to you about a couple of things. Work things.” Trent shifted, and his shoulder nearly knocked my nose off my face. The rain darkened his hair, sleeking it to caramel. “Things we should probably get out into the open.”
“Now? Did you miss the rain we’re in the middle of and that we’re standing under about three feet of cover?” I shivered as the wind picked up, cutting away what little warmth I’d built up in my fingers. Rubbing my hands together, I spat out, “This couldn’t wait until we were inside someplace? You know, with walls?”
“No. Because you’re asking me to go through a door with you. And after yesterday, that means something completely different than with any other cop.” He was giving me a look I couldn’t figure out. Eventually we’d either come to understand what a wrinkled nose and one squinty eye meant or we’d kill each other. “Because I’ve got to know what I’m getting into here. With you.”
“We’re cops, Leonard.” I went back to his last name, needing the distance. “Inspectors. We work for Arcane Crimes. Things are going to get a little weird.”
“Weird I can handle. You falling off a building? I’ve got to know if that’s just crappy luck or do you have some kind of death wish I should know about?”