Chapter Six
“Hello, may I speak to Tricia?” Monica called Tricia at her home late in the evening.
“Who's calling?” It was Sally who answered the phone, stopping temporarily in the process of blowing a bubble with the gum.
“This is Monica, her former roommate in college.”
“Will you hold on, please?” Sally said politely. Then she handed the receiver to Tricia, who was sitting next to her, reading newspapers. “Po!” A big bubble burst before Sally's mouth.
“Hello, this is Tricia.” She talked into the mouthpiece, eyes still on the papers.
“Hi, Snow White.” Monica called her by her nickname in college, owing to her pretty face, good figure and fair skin. “This is Monica.”
“Hi, Black Angel,” Tricia replied, using Monica's nickname, too. “How's everything with you?” Monica was famed in college for helping people, just like an angel coming from Heaven to save people in trouble.
“Not good. Really. I need your help.” Monica sounded melancholy, voice a little choked with sobs.
“What's the matter?” Tricia asked sympathetically, laying the papers aside, unconsciously onto Sally’s lap, who tossed the papers back onto Tricia's lap, still chewing her gum. Monica told her about the disappearance of her brother Frank and how her parents were worried.
“I'll come over to your house tomorrow to talk to your parents,” Tricia promised, pulling a wisp of her hair that had fallen in front of her eye behind her ear for the tenth time in last ten minutes.
Monica gave her the directions to her parents’ house.
***
Tricia arrived at Mr. Perez's house the next day, bringing Sally with her since she had just finished with a case and was on the waiting list for a new case to come. Now this might be the new case on which they could work together. Sally would be bored sick if no work came her way.
Monica had stayed at her parents' house overnight so that she could meet Tricia and introduce her to them. She had called her boyfriend and her office, too, about the situation, leaving a message on her employer’s answering machine. Her boyfriend offered to come to help.
“Nothing you can help us with, Billy,” responded Monica, twirling the cord around her index finger, “unless you are a detective, which, I regret to say, you are not. I'll be back as soon as I make some arrangements here. Be a good boy.” They cooed a few more love words between them and then disconnected the line.
After the introduction, Tricia only asked a few general questions and for a recent photo of Frank. The sisters wore the same apparel, which was supposed to be their uniform. They didn't care how ugly it looked: a blouse with sleeves to the elbow and a knee-length skirt, both of a lioness-brown color, with a lioness head printed on the back of the blouse in a darker shade, brown pantyhose and sandals. The sandals were specially ordered so that the toe-part looked a bit like the paw of a lioness, but really hid some sharp blades.
“Can I have a look in Frank's room?” Tricia asked Monica.
“Sure,” Monica said. “It's upstairs.”
It was a lazy bachelor's room with a never-made foul bed against one wall, a desk under the window, the top of it in disorder. Today his mother had cleaned the room for him, knowing that Monica's friend would come and might want to have a look at it, but she didn’t have time to make the bed yet. She had already spent one hour picking up all the clothes and socks lying everywhere and putting them away in the hamper. She had hidden all his stinky dirty shoes and sneakers in the closet, but neglected the desktop. Tricia came a bit too early for her cleaning job to be finished.
The view from the window was both attractive and distractive. It faced a small public park with a children's playground on one side, where young mothers watched their children playing, a round flowerbed in the middle and benches everywhere. Young couples could be seen sitting on them and kissing passionately. Whenever Frank had got bad grades in the tests, he would complain about the distracting view, which often made him unable to concentrate on his studies. Once his father had suggested that he move his desk to the other side of the room, but he had said that his brain cells needed more oxygen when he was studying.
Tricia and Sally split the room and each took up a half. Sally's mouth could be seen moving slightly as she chewed her gum while looking into the closet. “Um!” She held her breath, putting her right hand before her nose to keep out the stinking smell from the shoes. After a hasty glimpse, she shut the closet door. Tricia checked very carefully, even under furniture.
“What are you looking for?” Monica wondered.
“Anything that can give us a clue as to his connections or the places he frequents,” Tricia said after a peep under the bed. The search proved a disappointment. Half an hour later, Tricia and Sally took their leave. Then Peter and Monica also left on their separate ways to their offices.
***
“What parents!” Sally exclaimed frustrated, a bit shrill and edgy, once they got into their car. “They practically know nothing about their son.” She nearly swallowed the wad of gum.
“They said Frank never talked to them about anything. He never brought home any friends, or girlfriends, if he had any.” Tricia tried to appease Sally, who was smoothing the front of her cotton blouse for the imperceptible wrinkles, a big bubble hanging from her mouth.
“What can we do now?” She looked askance at Tricia from her passenger seat with a puckered mouth and a dissatisfied frown, the bubble shrunk into her mouth now.
Tricia brushed back a wisp of her glittering gold-colored hair from before her right eye, got it behind her ear, and said casually, “At least we got the address and phone number of the garage Frank worked for. It's not far from here.” She started the car and pulled out into the traffic. Ten minutes later, they reached the destination and parked their car outside the garage. They went in by a small door on the side and approached the reception counter with smiling faces.
“Can we speak to Mr. Brown, the owner?” Tricia politely asked an old man sitting behind the counter, her hands resting on the counter top. Sally stood beside her, with her right hand holding onto the strap of her brown leather purse, her gum tucked between her right cheek and teeth.
“That's me.” The old man stood up. “How can I help you, ladies?” He had a businesslike manner with just a little smile plastered on his face to please his customers. “Are you delivering some parcel for me from UPS?” He looked suspiciously at their brown uniforms.
“No. We are not from UPS.” Both girls were conscious of their brown outfits. This was not the first time that they were mistaken for UPS women.
“Frank Perez worked for you, didn’t he?” Tricia went on, broadening her winning smile at him.
“Yeah, but he never showed up today.” He wiped out his smile at once, as if he were a customer complaining to Frank's boss.
“Frank disappeared. He's never been home since Friday night.” It sounded like Frank had slept at home every night.
“I'm sorry to hear that,” the owner sympathized. “But who are you?”
“I'm a private detective. Frank's sister and I were roommates in college. She asked me to investigate.” Tricia showed him her ID, taming her loose hair into place.
“What do you want to know from me?” He assumed a cooperative attitude.
“Did Frank have any friends coming to see him here, or any phone calls for him?”
“Yes. A young guy often came a little before closing time and waited outside. They left together.” Then he added, “Once I was outside and heard them talking about meeting somebody in a go-go bar somewhere in New York.” He also gave a description of the guy as best he could at the request of Tricia. His description was so vague that it could almost fit any young man.
Finally Tricia thanked him. “You were really a great help to us. Thank you very much.” Then she handed him her name card, adding, “If you remember anything about Frank, please feel free to call me.”
When they were back in their car, Tricia checked the information Sally wrote down on the notepad. It was their way of working together: one did the asking, the other the writing. They found that if both asked questions, though by turns, it would serve as a distraction to the person in question as he looked from one to the other, answering their separate questions, unable to fully focus.
***
Back in the office, Tricia acquainted Lois with all the details of the case, accompanied with a series of gestures and laughter, seconded by Sally. Each girl was seated in her own chair behind the desk. Then their brains set to work looking for some ways to go on with the case. Lois picked up the phone to get to some of her connections in New York for a list of the registered go-go bars and waited for the fax to come in.
“Can we change the color of our uniforms?” asked Sally uncertainly, moving her eyes bashfully from Lois to Tricia. “I am sick of being mistaken for a UPS woman.” She put a new gum into her mouth.
“What color do you like?” asked Lois, her right foot under the desk tapping on the floor while she sipped hot cocoa from the china cup in her hand, the cup with a cracked line on the side. This cup was really a sentimental memento. Her grandfather had used it all his life. It was a two-hundred-year-old antique from the Qing Dynasty.
“Certainly not something resembling postwomen,” said Tricia, hooking a loose strand of her sunstreaked blond hair behind her ear.
“We adopted this color because of our nickname Lioness Team so that the color and the lioness head on the back can remind people of our nickname, our team, serving as an advertisement. If any of you can come up with a better idea, I have no objection,” said Lois, sipping more cocoa from the cup.
Sally buried her fingers in her shiny, short ink-black hair and scratched a bit, a mannerism reflecting that she was cudgeling her brains hard.
“Don't do that again, Sally!” moaned Tricia, who knew that Sally would eat a huge meal afterwards, saying that she needed to restore all the brain cells she had killed when she had cudgeled them.
“Okay,” she said at last, holding up both her hands in sham surrender. “I'll take a course in uniform designing before I can get any really worthwhile perception.”
Tricia smiled at her with an I-know-you-can't-do-it expression. Sally didn't even look at Tricia, busy with her mouth moves.
A humming noise was heard from the fax machine. After it ceased, Lois turned to take the fax. She looked at the fax sheet and made a grimace. Sally was sent on the wild-goose chase with Frank's photo in her purse and one-zillionth chance of hope.
“Why me for this stupid task?” she asked with a frown and a practically wrinkled nose.
“Because you like adventures more than either of us,” Tricia answered for both Lois and herself.
“It doesn't sound like an adventure. Anyone can go to such places,” Sally said doubtfully.
“You can see how girls act on the stage. It will be a new experience for you,” Tricia remarked.
“Thanks. I've seen enough of such things on TV.” She shouldered her bag and spat the gumball towards Tricia before she left the office. Tricia flipped her middle finger at the oncoming gumball, sending it into the garbage pail a few feet away in the corner.
“Score two points.” Sally left the words trailing behind her as she slammed the office door shut.
***
“It's lucky for me that Frank's father remembers his son's plate number. We can use this clue,” Tricia commented.
Lois thought for a moment, then agreed. Tricia called detective Sam Dawson. They were acquainted with each other, of course, having been on some cases together. Tricia liked Sam a lot and Sam liked Tricia, too. But sometimes there seems to be a long way from liking to loving and even an abyss between the two feelings. Only a bridge of karma can span the abyss. According to some old Chinese sayings, karma can bring the spouse to a person from a distance of a thousand miles away. But if karma won't grant it, even neighbors can't unite in holy matrimony like Romeo and Juliet.
“May I speak to Sam?” Tricia talked softly into the mouthpiece, tugging at a disobedient strand of her golden hair and slowly hooking it behind her ear.
“Detective Dawson's not in his office right now,” his assistant, Pedro, answered. “May I take a message, ma'am?”
“Hi, Pedro. This is Tricia. Tell Sam to call me back. I'll need his help in a new case.”
“Okay, I'll pass the message to him,” replied Pedro cordially.
“Thank you very much, Pedro.” Tricia let the receiver fall into the cradle with a clatter.
Tricia's theory was that if something serious had happened to Frank, his car might have been deserted somewhere. She wanted to check, or rather to exclude, the possibility.
***
It was ten twenty in the evening. Lois and Tricia were still in their office when the phone rang. “The Lioness Team. Lois speaking.”
“Hello, Lois. This is Sam. What's up?” Sam was panting like he had just run a Marathon race.
“Hi, Sam. Tricia wants to talk to you. Will you hold on, please?” She pushed down the hold button and made a gesture to Tricia.
Tricia picked up the phone on her desk. “Hello, Sam. This is Tricia. Can you help to check a car which might be deserted somewhere?” She gave Sam a description of Frank's car and the plate number, her hair falling again before her right eye with the forward move of her head. This time she didn't bother to pull it back. She was talking to Sam. No distraction whatsoever.
“No problem. I'll call you if I get anything. I'm kind of busy right now.” He hung up. No wonder he could never get a steady girlfriend.
Then both girls left the office for home. Their father hadn’t returned yet. Their mother was still up and waiting. It was too early to go to bed.
“Hi, Mom,” Lois and Tricia sang out in unison.
“Hi, girls. I've cooked some dumplings. You want to eat now or wait for your Dad?” Mrs. Lin always had some kind of food ready for her husband and daughters when they came home late, and everyday saw a different recipe. She didn't look her age. Chi exercising always kept people looking younger than they really were. When she went out with her daughters, she looked like their older sister.
Mr. Lin came back a few minutes later. The four of them sat at the dining room table with a bowl of hot dumplings before them.
Alida was enjoying herself in some wonderland of sweet dreams, or falling in a bottomless chasm in some nightmare, or dropping into a hole to meet a Mr. Rabbit of hers.
“Where's Sally?” Mr. Lin asked between chewing the dumplings.
“She went to New York on investigation,” Tricia said, swallowing a dumpling. “She may stay there for the night. She'll call to let us know.”
***
Before leaving the office, Sally rearranged the bars on the list in a visiting order according to their addresses. Now she was in Manhattan and would begin from the south. She parked her car at a meter near the bar on top of her new list. At the door of the bar she hesitated, the gum bubble much smaller this time. Are there any girls in such a bar? There are definitely no female customers, but there should be bar girls working here. Instead of her ugly uniform, she wore a greenish T-shirt and jeans with a pair of black sandals and had her pocketbook on her shoulder. She could never understand why people gave the bag such a name as pocketbook. It was definitely not like a book, nor could it be put into a pocket.
She vacillated before the door long enough for a skeleton to turn into a fossil. Some guy nudged her aside unexpectedly from behind, pulled open the door and went inside. She followed at his heels so she wouldn't be so conspicuous. As she meandered her way through the tables, nervously chewing hard on the gum, someone shouted at her. “Hey, girlie, get on the stage.” She ignored him, went to the back and found the manager. She showed Frank's photo to the pudgy manager, who raised both his pudgy hands to wipe his fat round face as if there was always some dirt there that he wanted to wipe off then lowered his hands before his chest to rub them together. He repeated this kind of hand motion all the time that he was talking to Sally. Sally showed the photo to some bartenders who happened to pass by. No luck for her first stop.
The second stop was not far from there, only a few minutes away. Sally parked her car right in front of the bar, inserting a quarter into the meter out of habit. She entered the bar, skirting the tables along the wall, and was shown to the manager's office.
“What can I do for you?” The manager in a black suit with a black bow tie at the collar of a white shirt looked up from something like a ledger.
Sally showed him the photo of Frank and inquired whether he had seen him recently in his bar.
“Who is this young man?” the manager asked, looking scrupulously at Sally.
“He's my cousin, disappeared three days ago. He was last seen in some bar in this area,” Sally fibbed, but for a good cause.
The manager shook his head, like a duck just coming out of a pond and shaking water from its head, and refocused on his book as if Sally didn't exist or was invisible like a ghost.
Sally left his office with a “Thank you” and shut the door behind her. She took the gum from her mouth and stuck it on the knob. On her way out she showed the photo to some of the bartenders, but the only response she got was a shake of the head. She was frustrated and thought that these people here were so lazy, not even bothering to say no. She put another gum into her mouth, hoping it would keep her spirits up a bit. As she walked to the front door, a big guy, wobbling like a drunkard and holding half a glass of beer in his right hand, blocked her way. “Hey, babe, want some beer?”
Sally shoved him with her left hand. The big guy fell back, knocking over the nearby table; his glass dropped into fragments with a “ping” on the tile floor, spilling the remaining beer onto his pants and the floor. He murmured to himself, “Fucking.”
Three young men at the table jumped up from their seats as the table was knocked over together with everything on it. With a gesture from one of them, who looked like the leader of the three, the men stepped toward Sally. “Hey, miss, you should apologize,” the leader said, “or I'll fuck you.”
“He should apologize.” Sally pointed to the big guy who began to sit up, supported with his right hand in a tiny pool of beer on the floor. He wiped the beer off his hand on his shorts and looked at himself unhappily. Shit. Never embarrassed like that before. But he knew better. That bitch of a girl is not someone you can mess with.
“Have a drink with us, babe. We can be friends.” Another of the three men grinned like a Cheshire cat at Sally. “More than friends. You know what I mean. We can go to somewhere else to have fun.”
“Step aside. I'm in a hurry,” she warned seriously. The grinning man held out a hand, intending to grab Sally's left arm. Sally used the index finger of her left hand and hit a special point on the man's outstretched hand. He immediately felt his whole arm go numb. This special point is called xue. There are more than seven hundred xues all over the human body. An acupuncture doctor will use a special needle to prick into a xue and stimulate it to get some healing effect for certain illnesses. In western countries, the karate masters will use fingers to jab on certain parts of the human body to stop the circulation of the blood like in Xena, the Warrior Princess, which is said to have originated in Persia and is totally different from xue-pricking in Chinese kungfu, because xue belongs to the nerve system and the pricking at different xues will produce different effects. So Sally just hit the Numb Xue for his arm, but the numbness would be over automatically after a certain period of time, depending on how hard the hitting was. No need to undo it. But some main xues have to be undone to get rid of the effects.
The leader had also learned some kungfu. So he kicked up his right foot sideways at Sally's stomach, intending to send her sprawling on the floor, while he cursed, “You bastard!”
Sally raised her right hand, and using the outer edge of her hand like a knife, she struck his ankle just hard enough to send a pain up his leg, and smilingly replied, “You should call me bastardess. Learn some grammar.”
He fell to a sitting position on the floor. The big guy had already gotten up on his feet again, but stood aside watching as if he had nothing at all to do with the fight. Sally spat her gum out; her chi was just strong enough to send the gum to the center of the third man's forehead and stick there without hurting him. The third man picked it down and put it into his own mouth, smiling at Sally.
No screams arose among the patrons, who were made up solely of the male sex, the sex that is known as a tough non-screaming type. They only shout. According to the vocal specialist, the voice of the male is an octave lower than that of the female. If a male screams, it will sound very ugly and disgusting, maybe like the bellow of a cow or the trumpet of an elephant.
Some bartender called the police, but since two of the three men were temporarily disabled, the third man was discouraged. He saw Sally walking deliberately out the door as she muttered to herself, “They can't even curse, those Chinese bastards.” So when the police arrived, all the troublemakers were long gone. |
|Archiver|手机版|小黑屋|中诗网
( 京ICP备：12024093号-1|
京公网安备 11010502045403号 )
发表于 2008-7-27 03:10:00