LOVERS, MUGGERS AND THIEVES A Novel By Edward McInnis ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Special thanks to Lynda Connolly for her invaluable assistance in preparing this book. Website, book conversion & publication by Kendrick * * * "Down by the river, down by the banks of the River Charles. That's where you'll find me along with lovers, muggers and thieves. Ah, but they're cool people. 'Cause I love that dirty water. Oh, Boston you're my home." Dirty Water by The Standells CHAPTER 1 I KILLED YOUR WIFE. CATCH ME IF YOU CAN. TRY AND KILL ME. HA HA. The letter had been sent, not to my home, but here. My office in the old Textile Building at the frayed edges of Boston's famous Chinatown and infamous Combat Zone. White business-size envelope, my name and address typed, no return address. Postmarked Boston. A single sheet of 8 1/2" X 11" white paper folded in thirds. The sentences composed of capital letters apparently cut out of magazines. Diedre had been killed five years before and the murderer never found. Her doom-day was a few months after our one-year wedding anniversary. As I recalled: November 13th. The hair on my forearms and the back of my neck rose when I looked at my desk calendar. Today was Thursday. November 13th. CHAPTER 2 Should I bring the letter to the cops? What could they do but dust it for fingerprints? And I would bet my crime-detecting iridescent fire opal ring that the killer had worn latex gloves. Why had he waited so long to surface? Why had he surfaced at all? Why was he seemingly asking to be killed? Why had he killed Diedre? Where was he? Who was he? Who? As I thought of Diedre, I felt a bittersweet melancholy, a nostalgia for what might have been but never was, a high and deep yearning for what could never be. And though I knew it could never be, I permitted myself to imagine the impossible. How many times had I indulged this lingering ghost-like grief, this sickly shadow of sorrow, over the last half-decade? How often had I knowingly idealized our brief season together, as if it were a time of magic and wonder? As if it were a classic tale of love and loss, known the world over, to be told and retold for generations? And then, as always, the reaction set in. I beat myself with the bludgeon of guilt and berated myself for her death though I knew, intellectually, that it wasn't my fault. But the intellectual brain is no match for the emotional brain. The grief and guilt had fused to form a highly combustible compound: a passionate desire for revenge. The pent-up yet imperative need to find her killer and mete out justice. Who would be the judge? Me. Who would be the jury? Me. Who would be the executioner? Me. CHAPTER 3 I looked up, surprised. I hadn't heard her enter. A young black woman with big, bewitching eyes, long straight black hair and a slinky, sequined, silvery, clinging, floor-length, long-sleeved gown. "'Member me?" she asked. "Sister Flukie," I said. "You do 'member," she almost smiled. "I didn't think King Pimp ever let you off the leash." "Never do. But leash invisible." Poor Sister Flukie. Slave to King Pimp, lord and master of the Combat Zone. As usual, Flukie looked doped up, burnt down, strung out, done in. And yet, deep in her eyes, blazed flames of desire, of perseverance, of the will to live. "King Pimp say fly a kite to Castille." "What?" I asked. "King want a sit-down." "When?" "Tomorrow," she said. "Midnight." "Hot Spot?" "Where else?" I sighed. Who would rid me of this turbulent pest? "Why?" I asked. "Find out tomorrow night." "King usually has Crazy F fly me kites." "Why he want a sit-down," she said. "Why?" I asked. "Crazy F try kill King." CHAPTER 4 I walked over to the Chinatown Service Center. Pinky Tran, the receptionist, sat at her desk, bawling like a drug-addicted baby going through withdrawal symptoms. "Pinky, what's the matter?" "You know," she stuttered out between sobs. "Still?" I asked. "They hurt me so much." Pinky's boyfriend Kelvin was six foot three and studied martial arts with Mei-Wei Chan, international grandmaster of wu shu and mother of my erstwhile partner in crime, Phoenix Chan. And, oh yes, Kelvin was...black. Chinese and Vietnamese thought nothing of dropping in and insulting and haranguing and mocking and berating Pinky for having a black boyfriend. "I'm sorry," I said. "Me, too," she said. "Want me to beat them up?" "That what Calvin say, too," she looked up at me, eyes glistening with tears. "But no can." "Why not? I'll crack their heads together like Moe with Larry and Curly. Nyuk, nyuk, nyuk." She laughed. "My kids love Three Stooges. You too?" "Soitan-ly," I said in my Curly voice. She stopped crying. "I sorry cry." "Don't be." "Want see Margie?" she asked. "She in?" "Yes. I buzz her." She hit the intercom. Margie's voice crackled: "Speak!" "Castille here," said Pinky. "Okay he come in?" "Quickly!" "Hang in there, Pinky," I said. "I hang." I walked through the warren of small flimsy-partitioned cubicles where bilingual, trilingual and even quadrilingual counselors helped East Asian clients find housing, jobs, schools for their children, immigration assistance etc. Languages burbled: Vietnamese, English, several dialects of Chinese. Sometimes even French, Khmer and Laotian. The counseling positions were low-paying jobs often held by Chinese who got themselves into the U.S. as tourists or students but wanted to stay for good. Because once their tourist visas expired or they graduated from college, they were legally obligated to return to their native countries. Unless. Unless they were sponsored to obtain their green cards. That is, become Permanent Residents. The cards weren't actually green; they were blue-ish. But they had once been green and the nickname stuck. Two main types of sponsors: close relative or employer. Virtually all the counselors had no relatives here. So they were being sponsored by their employer. Margie. Their future, their fortune, their fate was held in Margie's delicate but formidable hands. After acquiring a green card, the Permanent Resident could apply to be a naturalized American citizen. "My mentor!" a voice called. "Binh," I said to the ethnic Chinese Vietnamese who clumped up to me, one leg six inches shorter than the other. "Yes, I would like very much to tell you. I am proud to say I am American citizen." "You passed the exam," I said. "Congratulations. Did they ask you the state bird of Massachusetts?" "No, my mentor," he said, "but I look it up as you suggest." "The short-dinked rantallian, right?" "I am sorry to say not. State bird is chickadee. State flower is mayflower. State tree is American elm." "Illuminating," I said. "What's the state insect?" "I do not know, my mentor," he said, blinking and staring at me like I was an oracle. Or maybe he was just exhausted from working three full-time jobs every twenty-four hours. "Maybe the may bee," I said. "One other thing, my mentor." "Yes, Binh?" "I am no longer Binh," he said. "You changed your identity? Like a superhero?" "Superhero? No," he blinked. "Change, yes. Now I am Benjamin Franklin Do. Please, if you would, call me Ben." "Ben. I like it. It has a certain panache." "Yes, you see, Benjamin Franklin was born in Boston, my new home as a citizen of America." "The Home of the Brave and The Land of the Free Offer That Soon Expires." CHAPTER 5 All the way to the back, I knocked twice on a closed door, opened it and went in. At her desk, buried under mounds of paperwork, sat Margie. "Hello, ex-fianc`ee," I sang out. "Hello, ex-darling," she responded, without looking up from her desk. It had been six weeks since Margie returned from El Salvador. Where she had run to when she had called off our wedding. After I had been shot, she had returned to nurse me back to health. But we had tread lightly around the subject of our 'relationship.' "Let us go then, you and I," I said, "to engage in diligent and discriminating gastronomical activity." "English." "Let's eat." "When?" she asked. "Now." She looked up at the wall clock. "Only 4:30," she said. "You'll work yourself into an early grave," I said. "Too early," muttered Margie. "Which?" I asked. "Supper or grave?" "Both." "Later then," I said. "Sevenish." "I'm writing two different proposals for refugee services to both the Fortress and the Palace." The Fortress and the Palace were, in Margie-speak, Boston City Hall and the Massachusetts State House. "So? You usually get funded." "Except this time, CCBA is also applying," she said. "And they have no experience helping refugees get jobs." "Then their proposals will be rejected," I said, as always the Voice of Reason. "Have you learned nothing about Chinatown, you dope?" she asked, exasperated. "CCBA has connections to the City and State. If they get funded, they won't help a single person get a job." "What will they do with the money?" "Buy a Chinese supermarket or restaurant and rake in the profits." "Surely," I said, "against every law of man and God." "No shit, Sherlock Junior. But try getting the authorities to stop them, the fucking Mongolians." Mongolians, in Margie-speak, were the Chinatown Ruling Elite, headed by the Wong siblings: Bobby, Katy and Freddy.