The Misfortune Cookie

10 Bo

When things fall apart or deteriorate; when incompetent people gain power and make a situation worse.

It took a few days, but I finally found a good excuse to call Lopez. So good, in fact, that I’d probably have phoned him even if I hadn’t promised Lucky I’d try to find out why Lopez was investigating in Chinatown.

Shivering inside my heavy coat as the wind whipped down the street on a bleak January day, I pulled my phone out of my pocket and speed-dialed Lopez’s cell. (None of my vows to get over him had led me to delete his number.)

He answered on the third ring. “Esther?”

“Yeah, it’s me,” I said as another gust of icy wind blew down Doyers, the little L-shaped street in Chinatown that runs between Pell Street and the Bowery.

“Are you all right?” he asked. “You sound funny.”

“I’m just cold.” I tried to keep my teeth from chattering. Under my heavy coat, I wasn’t dressed for this weather.

“Where are you?”

“Chinatown.”

“Oh?” He sounded surprised. “Me, too. I’m working on a case here.”

“Really?” I said, as if also surprised by our proximity. “Oh, good!”

In fact, I had assumed Lucky would be right about that. He hadn’t survived all these years in his line of work by relying on bad information.

“Good?” Lopez repeated. “Does that mean you’re speaking to me?”

“Do you have to start right off with trick questions?” I said crankily.

“Sorry. I mean, no. I mean, uh . . .” He cleared his throat. “I’m glad you called.”

“Oh, really?” I hadn’t intended to be snippy with him, but I couldn’t seem to help myself.

I was standing outside of a well-known little eatery. Ted Yee was inside with the cast and crew of ABC. I looked through the restaurant’s big storefront window and waved to Officer Novak, the uniformed cop who was with them. Then I pointed to my phone and nodded, to let him know I had succeeded in contacting the detective I had told him I was going to call.

“Yes, really.” Lopez took a breath. “Look, can we talk? And I don’t mean that as a trick question.”

I turned my back to the restaurant so that Novak and my colleagues, if they were watching, wouldn’t see me scowling.

“If you wanted to talk,” I said, feeling incensed with Lopez all over again, “you could have called me.”

I was already way off script here, and I was kicking myself for it. But, well, he had that effect on me.

“I know, but when I put you in the squad car that night . . . morning . . . whatever . . . Well, when I said I’d call, you got so mad, I wasn’t sure I should call after that.”

“I got mad because—”

“And,” he continued, raising his voice, “it’s not as if talking was going all that well between us that night . . .” After listening to my stony silence for a long moment, he added, “Or right now.”

I sighed. “All right, look, I don’t want to talk about any of that right now.”

“Okay,” he said quickly.

His prompt agreement to drop the subject of his transgressions made me mad again. “What do you mean, okay?”

“Huh? You just said—”

“Oh, never mind,” I interrupted, in no mood to hear a reasonable rebuttal. I took a deep breath, refocused, and plunged in. “I’m calling you because I need your help. And you always . . . Well, you . . .” He had told me on several occasions, including the time he broke up with me, that he wanted me to call him if I ever needed his help. But although I had intended to remind him of that, I now found that the words stuck in my throat. Or formed a lump there. Or something. I gave myself a shake, gritted my teeth against the bone-numbing cold that was whipping down the street, and concluded lamely, “Look, I just need your help. So can you come here?”

“Yes. Do you need me there right now?”

In the background, I heard a man say irritably to him, “Now? We’re kind of in the middle of something here.”

So I said, “No, I guess not.” I didn’t want Lopez to drop everything, rush over here, and then be annoyed with me when he discovered that my problem wasn’t exactly a life-or-death situation. I wanted him to help me, after all. “Will what you’re doing right now take very long?”

“Hang on a second, Esther.” I could hear him conferring with someone, though I didn’t catch what the two of them were saying. Then he said to me, “I can be there within an hour. Is that all right?”

“That should be fine.” I hoped I was right.

“Where exactly are you?” he asked briskly.

“Doyers Street.” I gave him the name of the popular eatery where I’d be waiting.

“Sure, I know that place,” he said. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Okay. Good.” After a moment, I added, “Thanks.”

After we ended the call, I put my phone back in my pocket and stomped my chilled feet as I looked down Doyers, one of the oldest streets in the neighborhood, wondering which direction Lopez would come from. In traditional Chinese folklore, ghosts and spirits could only travel in straight lines, so local merchants had built this street to be crooked in order to keep out evil spirits. Or, at least, that was the story that Brian, the protagonist of ABC, was supposed to tell my character, Alicia, as we strolled down Doyers Street together today.

Being a cop rather than a filmmaker, Lopez would probably be more familiar with the street’s criminal associations. The little L-shaped street was sometimes known as the Bloody Angle because of all the gang wars and murders that had taken place here over the years. But that wasn’t in Ted’s script, which took a decidedly romantic view of Chinatown.

Even with the heavy lacquer of industrial-strength hairspray holding my ’do in place and my hood pulled up to protect it, the wind out here was messing up my hair. I also felt my nose running and my eyes starting to water from the cold. John wasn’t around to fix my hair and makeup, so I decided I’d better go inside before I got any more disheveled—even though we obviously wouldn’t be doing any more filming for a few hours.

I opened the door of the restaurant and went inside, giving a sigh of relief as I entered the warm building. It was only eleven o’clock in the morning, but the place was already so crowded that the noise level meant I’d had to step outside to phone Lopez. And considering the way our conversation had gone, I’d certainly been right not to sit in here, shouting over the phone to him while surrounded by my curious ABC colleagues.

“Is your friend coming?” asked Bill Wu as I sat down again at our table. He played Brian, my boyfriend in the film.

I nodded. Then I added to the cop hovering near us, “Detective Lopez will be here within an hour.”

“An hour?” Officer Novak repeated in dismay.

“I’m sorry.” Fudging a little, I said, “He’s in the middle of a big Chinatown investigation. It’s the soonest he can get here.”

“If it’s so big, then why haven’t I heard about it? This is my precinct, after all.”

Novak looked so young and fresh-faced, I thought he was probably brand new to the force, and it seemed likely that lots of things went on in the Fifth Precinct that no one told him about.

Hoping to placate him, I leaned toward him and said in a confidential tone, “He’s OCCB.”

“Oh. Those guys.” He nodded, sighed, and tipped his cap back, apparently settling in for the wait. “I get it.”

I glanced around and saw that my ABC colleagues looked puzzled but impressed.

“You don’t really want to stand there for an hour, do you?” I pulled out the free chair next to me. “Please have a seat, Officer Novak.”

Everyone seated at this table chimed in, urging him to sit down.

Novak hesitated for a moment, then smiled and accepted the invitation—as well as the hot cup of tea I insisted on pouring for him.

An apple-cheeked blond guy, Novak had shut down today’s production when he discovered us filming in Doyers Street and blocking traffic without any permits. His intervention was how I learned that we were there without the proper permits. But he had been very nice about not charging Ted for violating various local laws and ordinances—after I said that if he would be patient and not call this in, then an NYPD detective would come vouch for us and help clear up this misunderstanding.

So it was just as well, really, that I hadn’t followed through on my intention to kill Lopez after he’d arrested me.

“So your police friend is going to straighten this out for us, Esther?” said Ted. “Excellent! Why don’t we go ahead and have lunch while we wait?”

Everyone agreed with this suggestion, including Officer Novak. Enticing aromas were wafting through the crowded little eatery, so it would have been hard to resist.

And, fortunately, I could actually afford to eat today. In addition to being cast in Ted’s film a few days ago, I had recently been surprised and delighted to find my final paycheck from Fenster & Co. in my mailbox. Due to the way I had accidentally destroyed whole portions of the department store’s fourth floor while Max and I were confronting Evil there, I had assumed they would withhold my pay. But the impersonal wheels of corporate bureaucracy had turned out to be a wonderful thing in this instance, and the retail empire’s accounting system had simply spat out my paycheck along with all the others. I quickly deposited it before the company could change its mind, then I paid a utility bill, set some money aside toward next month’s rent, and bought groceries.

Heigh ho, the glamorous life of a working actress.

Now, sitting in a cozy, no-frills Chinatown restaurant with Officer Novak and members of the ABC cast and crew, I ordered some soup dumplings, a delectable feat of culinary engineering in which hot broth is contained inside Chinese dumpling wrappers. It’s one of my favorite things to eat on a cold day. Then I sipped my tea while everyone else at the table placed their lunch orders.

Ted Yee, who was sitting on my left, had plenty of flaws, as I was quickly learning, but he was a good-natured guy and, more to the point, unabashed in his enthusiasm for my work. He had declared himself “blown away” by my audition for him the day after his uncle’s wake, and he’d hired me on the spot. Thack had called me the following day, after negotiating with him, to inform me of a pay rate that would barely cover my basic living expenses, but which was nonetheless at least double what Ted was paying anyone else. And I had been mentally prepared for the modest pay scale, since I knew the film’s only backer had just died.

Although Aunt Grace had indeed declined to invest any more money in the film, she didn’t try to demand that Ted repay any of the funds that Benny had already invested. Ted said there was enough cash left to cover another couple of weeks of filming; so I had a job for at least that long. He also said he was lining up another backer, and he was very optimistic about securing sufficient funds from this new mystery investor to finish the movie.

However, I had no idea how reliable that vague information was. Only a few days into this job, I had already realized that optimism and enthusiasm were among Ted’s greatest strengths, while things like realism, practicality, and organizational ability were nowhere among his strengths. He had, for example, completely forgotten to secure permits for filming on location today. And upon realizing it this morning, rather than reschedule, he had blithely gone ahead with the location shoot as if that were a minor detail. Whereas, in fact, it was a major oversight that got our production shut down within an hour.

Luckily for Ted, though, the young cop who’d insisted that, no, we really couldn’t take over a public street without the city’s permission, had agreed to wait around for a more experienced officer to show up and decide what to do with us.

And since Lopez had cost me my previous job by arresting my employer, I thought grumpily, the least he could do was make sure this employer didn’t go to jail, too. It wasn’t as if Ted was laundering money for the mob, after all. He was just careless. Much like the sort of man who lets a whole week pass without calling a woman after sex, for example.

Stop, I told myself. You can’t bring that up today. Just follow the script.

I would get Lopez to help us, and I would find out if he was in Chinatown to run Lucky to earth. Those were the two things I needed to stay focused on when he got here. No deviating into intimate matters. And definitely no shouting at each other in front of a whole restaurant crowd again. Been there, done that, determined not to repeat the performance.

The warmth of the restaurant and the hot tea I was drinking had succeeded in taking the chill off my bones, so I unbuttoned my coat. Underneath, I was wearing Alicia’s costume, which was Ted’s notion of what a “really hot” uptown white girl would wear while strolling around Chinatown on a windy January day with her date. I was dressed in a tight, low-cut knit top, a little black leather jacket, a miniskirt, sheer stockings, and boots that were designed to be sexy rather than warm. When not on camera, I wore a heavy coat over this ensemble so that I wouldn’t promptly succumb to hypothermia.

John had done a great job with my hair; I wished I could get it to look this good. It appeared shiny and soft (though, in fact, it took the full-force gale in Doyers Street to make it move at all), falling around my shoulders in lush, rounded waves. Ted wanted a much more heavily painted look for Alicia’s face than I did, and John was good at creating a look that satisfied Ted without making me cringe.

Maybe more hair-and-makeup artists in show business should train in mortuaries, I thought.

The cast had to be self-sufficient about doing our own touch-ups, though, since John was a very busy guy. In addition to working on his PhD in biochemistry at NYU (which was where he was right now) and helping out at his family’s funeral home, he was also rehearsing to be one of the lion dancers roaming the streets during the upcoming firecracker festival.

It took two men to wear a lion costume and perform the dance. Bill Wu, who had the lead role in this film, was John’s partner this year. He was telling Officer Novak about it as we waited for our food.

“It’s sort of like a giant puppet that you wear,” Bill explained. “One man is the lion’s head, and the other is the body. The lion’s head is very animated—the eyelashes flutter, the mouth opens and closes, the head swivels and bobs up and down. And the whole dance is very athletic. The training for it arises out of Chinese martial arts, so there’s lots of jumping and kicking, crouching and leaping. And when two lions meet in the street, which happens often during the festival, they have to ‘fight’ or compete for the ‘lucky money’ and cabbage they’ve come to collect from the shopkeepers there.” Bill added, “The fighting is just symbolic, of course. We try to outdance each other. John and I love doing this because we’re really into the beauty and skill of martial arts, but we’re not that interested in hitting anyone.”

Ted said, “I thought John always did the lion dance with his brother, though.”

“His brother didn’t have time for training anymore. Not since his wife had their second baby a few months ago. So he decided to drop out,” said Bill. “Which was when John asked me to partner with him this year.”

Given John’s other commitments, I was amazed that he had time or energy to train for the lion dance. And Bill was almost as busy. He was a pharmacology student who had reduced his course load to part-time this term so he could star in Ted’s movie. He was hoping that success in ABC would convince his parents to agree to let him drop out of grad school and pursue acting as a full-time career, which was what he really wanted to do. His parents, however, expected him to get this youthful acting bug out of his system by doing Ted’s film, then return to school full-time next term and become a pharmacologist—a future that Bill viewed without much enthusiasm.

Like John, Bill was twenty-five—just two years younger than me. And I couldn’t imagine letting my parents play that big a role in my decisions about my adult life; not even if my parents happened to be people whom I listened to. But I was learning that things were often different for a first-generation Chinese-American than they were for me. Especially in Chinatown, where traditional influences remained strong.

“Those lion costumes are so beautiful and elaborate,” I said to Bill. “Is it a lot of work to take care of them?”

“Oh, you bet,” he said with a nod. “And they’re expensive, too.”

“I should write something for ABC that takes place during the firecracker festival,” Ted mused. “We could film a scene where the characters are surrounded by lion dancers. Wouldn’t that be cool?”

“As long as you remember to get a permit,” said Officer Novak.

“Huh?” said Ted.

I repressed the impulse to roll my eyes.

“Well, the whole event sounds great,” Officer Novak said to Bill. “I’m looking forward to it.”

“You’ve never been to Chinatown during the New Year before?” I asked him.

“Nope. This will be my first time.” He added, “But I’ll be working that day. Crowd control.”

“I’m sure you’ll enjoy it, even while working,” Bill said. “It’s a great celebration.”

I and everyone else at the table agreed with this. Besides Ted and Bill, we were seated with several crew members and two other featured actors in the film.

Cynthia Kwan, the only other woman in our group today, was playing Mei, the FOB girl who was Alicia’s competition for Brian’s affections. Cynthia and I got along well, whereas our two characters fought like alley cats every time they met in the story—such as when Mei bumped into Brian and Alicia kissing on Doyers Street, which scene we were supposed to film today. The only cast member besides me who had an agent, Cynthia had graduated last year from NYU’s Tisch School of Performing Arts. I thought she was good as Mei, though—like me—she was somewhat hampered by the clumsy dialogue and one-dimensional stereotyping that dominated Ted’s script.

The other cast member seated with us was Archie Sung, who played Jianyu, an imaginary medieval warrior-poet who appeared to Bill’s character, Brian, in daydreams and reveries, to give him advice, teach him cultural pride, and impart traditional values to him. There was no explanation or internal story logic for Jianyu’s visitations; he just kept popping up in Ted’s heavy-handed script, quoting Confucius and Lao Tzu, until Brian gradually realized that the hardworking and honorable Mei epitomized the traditional values he was coming to appreciate, while the selfish and materialistic Alicia would never even be able to understand them.

Archie was a martial arts pro, rather than an actor. He had won a number of competitions, and he ran a martial arts school uptown. He saw ABC as an opportunity to get his skills on film, which exposure he hoped would attract sponsors and students. So Jianyu delivered all his speeches while performing elaborate kung fu forms. Although this meant there was usually a disorienting lack of continuity between what Jianyu was saying and what he was doing, the gracefully athletic routines Archie performed while delivering his dialogue were certainly a welcome distraction from the tedious monologues that Ted had written for him.

I was warm enough to remove my heavy coat by the time our food arrived. Since I didn’t want to risk getting food on my costume, I asked for extra napkins, which I tucked carefully over my chest and lap. Cynthia and Archie did the same; but Bill, who mostly wore his own clothes when playing Brian, said he’d just go home and change shirts if he spilled something on himself. Like John, who lived with his father (John’s brother had moved out upon getting married), and Ted, who lived with his mother and sister, Bill lived with his parents; and the family apartment was only a few blocks from here.

Archie (about whose personal life I knew nothing) had to be particularly careful with his costume, since Jianyu was dressed entirely in white: pants, slippers, tunic, sash, and robe. Even his sword belt was white. The sword itself currently lay sheathed on the floor under our table. While Mei stood exchanging insults on the sidewalk with Alicia, after finding her in Brian’s arms, Brian would have a vision in which Jianyu performed an elaborate sword-form in the middle of Doyers Street while reciting a monologue about honor, wisdom, and virtue.

Well, that had been the plan, anyhow. Before it turned out that Ted had forgotten to apply for the necessary permits for a location shoot.

All things considered, I wondered if this film would really get made.

Although the soup dumplings which the waiter had set before me looked mouthwatering, I knew from experience not to bite into one immediately. They usually came to the table molten hot, so I was letting them sit for a bit.

So, since my mouth wasn’t full, I made conversation. “Has anyone heard from Mary Fox? How’s her leg?”

Although we weren’t exactly filming a cult classic here, I was nonetheless very pleased to have this job—and keenly aware that it was available to me because the original actress had broken her leg. I knew how I’d feel if our positions were reversed, so although I didn’t know Mary (and although I was very glad to have her role), I felt bad for her.

Ted, who was a surprisingly big eater for such a skinny guy, paused in his consumption of the enormous lunch he’d ordered. “Oh, yeah, that reminds me! I talked to her last night. She says we can still use her apartment.”

I frowned in puzzlement. “For . . . ?”

“For the scene that takes place in Alicia’s apartment,” he said. “We need a designer-chic uptown sort of place for that, and when I asked you about where you live, it didn’t sound like your place would fit the bill.”

“Definitely not,” I said. Alicia was well-to-do (though the source of her money was never explained in Ted’s script), as well as materialistic; she wouldn’t be caught dead in my apartment. “Mary’s acting career must be going well if she can afford the kind of apartment Alicia would live in.”

Ted shook his head. “Not really. Mary comes from old money. Trust fund and stuff.”

“Ah.” If I’d felt any guilt about taking her role, it was evaporating. Mary could still eat without this job; I couldn’t.

Cynthia added with a smile, “But she’s nice, even so.”

“Mary is nice,” Bill agreed. “She deserves better.”

“Breaking her leg and having to drop out of the film must have been so disappointing for her,” I said.

Bill nodded. “And she was already on quite a losing streak by the time that happened.”

“Yeah, I really felt bad for her,” said Cynthia. “It seemed like it was just one thing after another.”

“I know how that goes,” I muttered, poking my dumplings gently to let some steam out.

“But like I told Mary last night, it’s almost the New Year,” Ted reminded everyone. “A time to change your luck and turn your fortunes around.”

“In the nick of time,” I murmured.

I was hungry by now, so I hoped I had let the dumplings cool for long enough. I bit tentatively into one—and it was delicious. Still a little too hot, but not enough to burn my mouth. So I kept on eating.

I was nearly finished with my meal when I heard a cell phone ringing near me, but it didn’t sound like mine. I looked at Ted, but he ignored the sound. So I glanced inquisitively at Officer Novak, who was on my other side. He heard the phone, too, and shook his head, indicating that it wasn’t his.

Then I remembered. “Oh!”

I reached down into my purse, which was sitting between my feet on the floor, and extracted the unfamiliar ringing phone from it. It was a prepaid cell that John had given to me yesterday after he’d purchased it from a local vendor; Lucky wanted to be able to call me without using my regular number. Since I knew, therefore, who my caller must be, I realized I’d better go back outside. Apart from how noisy it still was in here, I should probably seek some privacy for this call.

So I shed my napkins, then I grabbed my coat and struggled into it as I headed for the door. “Hello?”

“No names,” Lucky said immediately. “We’re on the phone.”

“I understand,” I assured him. The wind hit me like a block of ice as soon as I stepped outside. Since my coat took forever to button and zip, I just wrapped it tightly around me and held it in place with one arm while I talked. “What’s up?”

“Any information about your boyfriend yet?”

“He’s not my—”

“Any information yet?”

“I’m seeing him today, so I should have news very soon.”

“Good. Why don’t you come here later and tell me in person? Our mutual friend is also coming over later. To discuss certain matters.”

“Our mutual friend?” I repeated, wondering if he meant John.

“He’s bringing his dog,” Lucky added.

“Oh, that friend. Okay, I’ll be there later. After work.” I’d be hungry again by then, so I said, “Ask him to bring dinner.”

“Will do.”

“Any news at your end?” Even though he was still hiding out in the back rooms of a funeral home, I knew he was in contact with some of his sources.

“Actually, yeah. I been finding out what I could about local matters ever since you and our mutual friend informed me that the sudden demise of a certain individual was definitely not as accidental as it looked.”

After the unnerving experiment in Max’s laboratory had confirmed that Benny was cursed with death by mystical means, we had returned to Chen’s Funeral Home the next day to update Lucky. Since then, Max had concentrated on researching how to disable or defuse a misfortune cookie and how to reverse its effects once the curse was inflicted. And Lucky had been trying to find out who had wanted Benny Yee dead.

He said to me, “But I don’t want to talk on the phone about what I’ve found out. It can wait until you get here.”

“Okay.”

Whether Benny was the first victim or just the first one whom we had so far detected, the success of that curse was bound to make mystical murder an irresistibly seductive solution to whatever other problems, enemies, or obstacles the killer faced hereafter. After all, as far as we knew, no one else even suspected Benny had been murdered. So doing it again—and getting away with it again—would simply be too tempting a prospect for the killer. Max always said that Evil was voracious and fed on its own appetite, and I had found that events kept proving him right about that. So I agreed that there was bound to be another misfortune cookie. We needed to be prepared for it.

“You’re watchin’ your back, right, kid?” Lucky asked.

“Yes,” I said. “Of course.”

“You gotta be careful.”

“I am.”

“Our mutual friend is holed up with his research. And I’m holed up with people who are practically family to me. But you . . .” He made a worried sound. “You’re out there on the streets, a vulnerable target, if our anniversary gets suspicious.”

“I think you mean adversary.”

“So don’t get careless.”

“I won’t,” I assured him.

If I thought about it, I did feel a little anxious about working in Chinatown while the cookie killer was still roaming free and probably preparing to bake again. So I tried not to think about it. It just made me jumpy, and that wouldn’t help the situ—

“Esther?” said a voice behind me.

“Aaagh!” My cell phone flew up in the air as I flinched in surprise and whirled around.

Lopez had good reflexes; though startled by my reaction to his greeting, he caught the phone before it fell to the pavement.

“Esther! Esther!” Lucky was shouting. “ESTHER!”

“Are you okay?” Lopez asked me.

“Fine.” I seized the cell, not wanting Lopez to recognize my caller’s voice. My heart was pounding as I put the phone to my ear and said loudly to Lucky, “I’m fine! Just fine. Someone startled me, that’s all. Everything’s okay. No worries. I have to go now. I’ll see you later.”