The Misfortune Cookie

12 Fortune, luck

“And that’s all Lopez said about being in Chinatown. So it looks like you got lucky again,” I said to the notorious Alberto Battistuzzi as I spooned a modest portion of steamed crab in spicy sauce onto my plate that evening in the Chens’ back office.

“I’m trapped in a funeral home,” he said grumpily. “How lucky is that?”

“You’re safely hidden in a funeral home,” I corrected, “which should be treated as good news, given that you were worried about being rumbled.”

The old capo sighed and nodded in acknowledgement of this. “I’m a little cranky, I guess. I got word before you got here that OCCB has arrested a couple more of our guys. This is a grim time for the family.”

“Has Don Victor been taken into custody?” Max asked, helping himself to some food.

“No, that’s the good news,” said Lucky. “They still can’t touch the boss. Not so far.”

“Your loyalty to the head of your famiglia does you honor,” said Max, which I thought was a tactful way of commenting on the situation.

“It’s how I was raised.” Lucky looked at me again. “So your boyfr—uh, Detective Lopez really don’t seem to have any idea that I’m holed in up Chinatown?”

“No.” I shook my head. “No hint of it at all. He seems to be in the neighborhood strictly to work on the Ning case.”

“Then that’s one problem we are spared,” said Max, who had been apprised of Lucky’s concerns about Lopez before my arrival this evening. “Beef with preserved ginger, Esther?”

“No, thanks, Max. I’ve got a costume fitting later, and I had a pretty hearty lunch today. So I’d better eat lightly.”

Max had brought such a delectable dinner, though, that I was tempted to stuff myself despite how it would make me look in the tiny outfits that Ted insisted on for Alicia.

“I thought you were done working for the day?” Lucky said as I handed him the container of crab.

There was currently no one else (well, no living person) in the mortuary. John was still at the NYU lab, his father was playing mahjong this evening, and his brother had gone home for the night after letting me into the building and thanking me for preventing Benny Yee’s widow from committing a murder here during her husband’s wake.

Nelli lay by the door, contentedly chewing on a bone that Max had brought to keep her occupied. He believed this activity helped her think. As Nelli made occasional happy little sounds while gnawing on her prize, I wondered what she thought about.

“Well, yes, I am finished filming for the day,” I said to Lucky. Which was why I was now fully covered in layers of warm winter clothing, with my face clean of Alicia’s makeup. “But as I was leaving the set, Ted asked me if I’d meet him at his mother’s store later to try on some outfits for a party scene that we’re supposed to film later on.”

To my relief, he hadn’t wanted me to do the fitting at that moment, since he had a meeting to go to right after the shoot; so I hadn’t had to cancel my plans to confer with Lucky and Max over dinner at the funeral home.

“How is the filming going?” Max asked me.

I waggled my hand. “So-so.”

I started giving them a judiciously edited account of the day’s events while I served myself some steamed Chinese broccoli. Then I succumbed to temptation and put a dumpling stuffed with succulent shredded duck on my plate.

After our eventful lunch on Doyers, which had concluded with Ted assuring a departing Lopez that we certainly would not attempt to film on location again without a permit, most of us had returned to the loft on Hester Street to shoot part of a different scene there, so the day wouldn’t be completely wasted.

The loft, which was chilly and pretty bare-bones, had belonged to Benny Yee, and it served as Ted’s production base. This was where I had auditioned for my role. Ted used some of the space to store all his film equipment. Another part of the loft was set aside for the actors to get into costume and makeup. The rest of the space was a film set decorated to look like a small apartment; this was where the movie’s protagonist lived, and a number of scenes took place here.

As we were setting up for the afternoon shoot there, I’d learned that Ted had an additional problem, besides losing Benny as an investor. It turned out that Benny had not left his widow as well-fixed as everyone assumed, and Grace Yee needed to sell this loft in order to solve the financial problems created by Benny’s recent business setbacks. These fiscal woes, she had explained privately to Ted, were why she couldn’t honor Benny’s memory by sinking more money into the movie which had been his last investment in life. Even for Benny’s nephew, Grace just couldn’t spare the cash—as her sons kept telling her.

She was sympathetic to Ted’s situation and didn’t plan to kick him out of the loft, but she was going to have to put the place on the market soon. She was just waiting to be advised of an auspicious date for that.

“Astrology is very important to Chinese people,” Ted explained in a quick aside to me, when telling us about the possibility of losing the loft as our production base and primary set. “She wouldn’t want to launch the sale on an unlucky day.”

Fortune and luck, both good and bad, kept playing a big role in everyone’s fate here, including mine.

Due to the economy, the loft might sit on the market for a long time. After all, although it was in a good location, it would probably need remodeling and updating to be useful to anyone besides an indie filmmaker or a tong underlord. (I was curious about what Benny had used the place for before loaning it to Ted, but I assumed I was better off not knowing.)

“Or this loft might sell within days to a buyer who wants us out of here by the closing date.” Ted concluded with a shrug, “There’s no way of knowing.”

“What’ll happen to the movie if we lose this space?” Bill asked anxiously. “I really need this film to succeed, Ted. My parents . . . you know.”

I resisted the urge to give Bill a reality check. Even if the film got finished, which wasn’t a given, success was nowhere in this low-budget movie’s future. Not with Ted’s clumsy script and plodding direction.

“Don’t worry, we’ll find another space,” said the ever-optimistic Ted. “Our fortunes are improving all the time. I’ve got a meeting later today with our new backer.”

“We have a new backer?” I asked eagerly.

“Well, I hope he’s our new backer,” said Ted. “Fingers crossed.”

Indeed.

Dressing, undressing, and sitting around waiting to work were uncomfortable in the frigid loft. So was touching each other, due to how cold our hands were. We wound up working on a love scene between Brian and Alicia today, during which my shirt kept getting hiked up (but stayed on); and every time Bill touched my bare skin, it was hard not to shriek.

Cynthia wasn’t needed for this scene, since Mei wasn’t in it, so she had gone home after lunch. Archie was with us on set, though, since Jianyu came to Brian in a vision while Alicia was trying to seduce him.

None of us had our lines down well for the scene, since we hadn’t expected to shoot it today, so progress was slow and we had to do a lot of retakes. Which meant that I spent much of the afternoon repeatedly flinging myself at Bill, who responded with comedic uncertainty to Alicia’s aggressive sexuality. The first few takes were a little uncomfortable between us, since we were scant acquaintances who’d never done more than shake hands before, and now I was in his arms and kissing him. But after we’d done this several times in a row while Ted asked me to tilt my head differently, the production assistant called out the lines we kept forgetting, and Archie was practicing moves nearby with his sword while waiting for his cue . . . the awkwardness faded, and Bill and I got pretty comfortable with each other.

Kissing a fellow actor in performance isn’t like kissing someone in life. Your character may well have complex feelings about embracing the other person, but you’re just doing your job. So unless your relationship with the other actor is making the situation complicated (which wasn’t the case here), once you get over the initial embarrassment of intimately touching each other, doing a love scene isn’t that much different than doing a close-contact fight scene or a dance routine together.

It’s all physical acting, and in each instance, you have to rehearse together, develop trust and a comfort zone with each other, learn your mutual moves well enough to make the scene look spontaneous and natural, hit your marks, say your lines, and make sure your face can be seen when the director wants it seen. And whether you’re on camera or on stage, the whole time you’re touching and kissing each other while exchanging seductive dialogue and pretending to be turned on, lots of people are right there in the room watching you. When filming a love scene, the director may be within a foot of your embracing bodies, and the camera and microphone may be perilously close to hitting you in the head.

So although Bill was the first man who had touched me this way since Lopez had left my bedroom Christmas morning, there was no similarity whatsoever between the two experiences, and one didn’t remind me of the other.

Anyhow, as I now told Max and Lucky, we’d gotten a very late start on filming today because of the Doyers Street mess, and we hadn’t really learned our lines for the scene we wound up working on. (I didn’t tell my two companions that the scene involved a lot of kissing and fondling.) So we didn’t get much done today and would have to return to the same scene tomorrow.

“And at some point,” I concluded, “we’ll also have to go back to Doyers to film the scene we should have filmed today.”

Max reached for a second helping of noodles as he said, “It was most thoughtful of Detective Lopez to offer to help expedite the necessary paperwork for the filming to proceed more smoothly.”

“Thoughtful, my elbow,” said Lucky. “He owed it to her.”

I froze for a moment, feeling awkward as I realized he must know what all his colleagues who’d been busted at Bella Stella knew—that I’d had sex with Lopez (twice) after the arrests at Fenster’s, and then he’d never called me.

Lucky added, “He’s the reason she lost her last job, after all.”

“That’s right,” I said with an emphatic nod, though I recognized that Detective Quinn had a point; I’d lost my job because I was working in a mob joint that got busted. Even Thack had said it was bound to happen eventually.

“Besides,” Lucky added, “it’s no secret that Detective Lopez has got a thing for Esther. Anyone can see it. So he probably feels bad about what he did to her. Maybe he even wishes he could go back and change what happened.”

“Yes, I suppose so,” said Max, oblivious to the subtext that I suspected I was hearing. “Helping her now was obviously the honorable thing to do.”

“Hmph,” I said, recalling that Quinn seemed to think Lopez was helping me in hopes of getting laid again.

“Yep. If he’s bein’ a stand-up guy now,” said Lucky, “well, it’s no more than he should do for a lady he’s wronged that way he wronged our Esther.”

Our eyes met for a moment, and I saw that he did indeed know. But he was, in his way, a gentleman of the old school, so he would never mention it. Not directly, anyhow—and probably not ever again, either.

So I smiled at him and said, “Being saddled with the job of liaising between Ted Yee and city bureaucracy might even be sufficient punishment. I sure wouldn’t want to be in Lopez’s shoes now.”

“And speaking of Detective Lopez,” Lucky said, though his tone suggested he was changing the subject, “it’s kinda funny that he’s poking around Chinatown because of the Ning family.”

“Funny ha-ha or funny strange?” I asked.

“From where I’m sittin’, funny coincidental.” He added with a philosophical shrug, “Or maybe not. Uncle Six has got his fingers in so many pies, maybe it ain’t that strange that Young Blue Eyes and I both wound up with our hooks stuck in him at the same time.”

“Ah!” said Max, who had obviously followed Lucky’s mixed metaphors better than I had. “While Detective Lopez is revisiting his former investigation of the younger Ning whom the elder Ning is now trying to get exonerated, you have uncovered relevant information about the Nings in the course of your inquiries into Benny Yee’s affairs.”

“Yep.”

“Oh.” I said in surprise to Lucky, “Do you mean you think Uncle Six wanted Benny dead?”

“Sure looks like it,” he confirmed.

“I don’t understand,” I said. “They were both in the Five Brothers tong. Wouldn’t that make them allies rather than enemies?”

“Well, I don’t know about the Chinese, kid—John’s an educated boy, so he could tell us—but Sicilians must have a hundred proverbs that warn you how dangerous your friends can be,” said Lucky. “Sometimes they rat on you . . .”

Which was presumably what Victor Gambello was worried about these days, with so many of his “family” members being arrested.

“. . . and sometimes they stab you in the back—which they’re in a position to do because you trusted them. After all, giving someone an opportunity like that is a mistake a man doesn’t make with his enemies.”

Max asked with interest, “Are you saying you’ve learned that Benny Yee coveted Uncle Six’s leadership position in the Five Brothers?”

“Bingo, Doc.”

I said, “And I suppose a man like Uncle Six holds onto his position by being ruthless to challengers?”

“It’s pretty much a requirement of the job,” said Lucky.

“Then I would say he seems a viable candidate for our unknown adversary,” said Max.

“But Uncle Six was so courteous at the wake,” I argued. “Bowed before the coffin, spent a lot of time paying his respects to the relatives, stayed to mingle with visitors. John said his behavior is what restored the family’s face after that scandalous scene between Benny’s mistress and his wife.”

“Hearing about that is what put him on my radar,” said Lucky. “The Chens told me they were surprised by it, since everyone knew he didn’t like Benny. So that got me to thinking that maybe he was the one who whacked the guy.”

“Because he showed such respect for the departed?” I asked. “Don’t you think he might have done that just because exercising benevolence toward a dead rival was good for his face?”

“Esther’s point is well taken,” said Max. “No doubt Uncle Six’s behavior that evening enhanced his own social credit, not just the Yee family’s. It was a shrewd choice, a way of confirming his unshakeable stature.”

“Maybe,” Lucky conceded. “But another possibility is that Six is one of those guys who get a kick out showing up at a funeral and acting like the dead guy was their favorite person, when they’re really the one who sent him down for the dirt nap.”

“Well, that’s creepy,” I said disapprovingly.

“No argument there,” said Lucky. “I mean, sure, sometimes you can’t get out of attending the send-off of a guy you whacked. But that ain’t no reason to be oily about it.”

I couldn’t think of a reply to that, so I stuffed my shredded duck dumpling into my mouth.

“A person who could murder Benny Yee and then show such solicitude to his widow at the wake . . .” Max nodded. “That would certainly be in keeping with the cruelly ironic methodology of the murder—sending a death curse to a notoriously superstitious man.”

I asked, “Do you think Uncle Six could be some sort of sorcerer?”

“Possibly,” said Max. “Lucky, do you know if he has any previous connection with mystical events?”

Lucky shook his head. “As far as I can tell, he don’t. I’ve talked with reliable sources about this. And Six is a high-profile guy, after all, meaning there’s always a lotta chatter about him. So I think I’d have found something by now—at least a question mark—if he had a habit of conjuring mysterious mojo.”

“In that case,” said Max, “I am inclined to think that rather than possessing the sort of power used in this murder, he instead is a man with the resources to secure the assistance of a discreet person with the necessary skills.”

“Definitely,” said Lucky. “I know something about this guy’s reputation. If he wants a thing to be done, it gets done. Maybe he saw someone with dark power and thought of a way to use it to get rid of an inconvenient upstart who was getting on his nerves.” He added, “Or maybe he wanted to whack Benny in a way that would never point to him—or even be recognized as murder—and so he looked around for someone who could help him pull that off.”

“Either way,” I said, “it sounds like Uncle Six is someone who could have arranged the weird way Benny was killed.”

“And he had motive,” said Lucky. “In fact, he might’ve felt pushed to it. I hear that Benny was getting pretty aggressive with Ning by the time he died.”

“That sounds reckless,” I said, remembering the ruthlessness I had sensed in Uncle Six at Benny’s wake.

“Or desperate,” said Lucky. “Benny was having a run of bad luck lately, just like his widow told your movie director. One of his perfectly legitimate business interests went bust last month, and then the cops shut down a less-than-strictly-legal operation that was a good earner for him. Maybe if things had been going well, he’d have been more patient and bided his time. But with his luck turning sour and his business concerns bleeding money, he started getting pushy, demanding a bigger cut of things and trying to grab more power. And that didn’t go over well with Joe Ning.”

“No, I wouldn’t think so,” I said, finishing the food on my plate and resisting the urge to reach for seconds. I had a feeling that every extra bite would show up in whatever costumes Ted wanted to me to try on at his mother’s store tonight. “Well, at least we have a viable suspect now. That’s progress. Uncle Six is not a person I look forward to investigating, though.”

“You should stay away from him,” Lucky said firmly. “Leave this to me. At least until we know more. Got it?”

“Got it.” I was not inclined to argue. After all, whatever we might suspect about Joe Ning, the only thing we actually knew for certain right now was that he was the sort of adversary whom Lucky knew how to handle—even while lying low in a funeral home. “I gather you’re going to try to find out if Uncle Six has made friends lately with someone who has unusual talents?”

“That’s the plan.” He looked at Max. “How about you, Doc? Any information on the magic cookie front?”

“I have made progress in my research,” said Max, having finished his meal, “and am ready to implement a partial solution to our problem.”

Since Lucky seemed to be finished eating, too, I started closing the food containers as Max continued speaking.

“Using a physical object to deliver a death curse is a widespread phenomenon and longstanding tradition, of course,” he said. “The specific method of conveyance being used in this instance—a fortune cookie—seems to be unprecedented, as far as I can ascertain, but apart from that, this appears to be a very conventional form of mystical murder. In a sense, it’s a bit like dispatching someone with a firearm.”

“I’d say it’s nothing like that,” said Lucky. “Killing someone with a cookie? That’s just wrong.”

“I think I see what you’re saying,” I said to Max. “There are all different kinds of guns and bullets, but there’s a sense in which they’re all the same. With every one of them, after all, you point the weapon, pull the trigger, and shoot the victim.”

“Precisely,” said Max. “There is obviously talent involved here—we witnessed in my laboratory a few nights ago how much sheer power was instilled in the curse that Benny received.”

“And I won’t be forgetting that experience anytime soon,” I said truthfully.

“Yet there is also a certain . . . mundanity, if you will, to this person’s practice of magic. In studying the matter, I have come to believe that our adversary is methodical, deceptive, and thorough, but not particularly creative or original. This may be a natural mindset, or it may be that the conjuror is relatively new to the practice of mystical arts and still learning the classics, so to speak.”

Nelli made a cheery, high-pitched sound as she shifted her position on the floor by the door to get more comfortable, then resumed gnawing on her bone.

Max continued, “The conventionality of cursing someone with death via an ensorcelled object means that I have previous experience with related phenomena, and also that I have found substantial research material to rely on for some of the specifics of this particular method.”

I rose to my feet and started putting the remains of our dinner into the little mini-fridge that Mr. Chen kept here for pack lunches and leftovers. “So how do we take the whammy off the next misfortune cookie that comes along?”

“I’m pleased to say that it’s a simple matter of destroying the cookie via mystical means,” Max replied. “I have already made the preparations in my laboratory, so that we can immediately dispose of any suspicious cookies that we encounter.”

“Excellent,” I said.

“There is a catch, however,” Max warned.

“There always is,” Lucky said on a sigh.

“All my research on similar conveyance methods strongly indicates—to the extent that I consider it a virtual certainty—that breaking open the cookie is what activates its dark magic. Until then, although extremely dangerous in terms of its potential, it does no damage.”

“That’s also in keeping with how we were told Benny died,” I noted. “He was fine after receiving the cookie; it wasn’t until he cracked it open that he died.”

Max nodded. “In the act of breaking or cracking the cookie, the curse is immediately inflicted. And once engaged, I am sorry to say, it cannot be lifted, mitigated, or redirected.” His expression was grave as he said, “Thus the victim is doomed. Inexorably cursed with death. Nothing can save him or her from that imminent fate. Based on the immediacy with which Benny Yee’s death curse took effect, I postulate it’s unlikely the victim will survive more than a few minutes after the cookie is cracked. Certainly not more than a few hours, anyhow.”

“Well, that’s grim,” said Lucky.

We all looked at the fortune cookies which had come with our meal. They were still sitting on the big desk where we’d just had dinner.

“I may never eat another one of those things again,” I said.

“These don’t look like the one that killed Benny,” Lucky pointed out.

“Even so . . .”

He nodded. “You’re right, kid. I’ve lost my appetite for these things, after what Max just said.”

“Obviously,” said Max, “we must be vigilant. Rather than risk another murder, any suspect cookie should be seized immediately so that I can safely destroy it. But such seizure must be conducted with the utmost care. Any damage that the cookie sustains before I am able to nullify its dark power is likely to be fatal.”

“You mean that even after the cookie is no longer in the presence of the victim,” I asked, “cracking it will still cause his death?”

“Or it may cause the death of the person carrying it,” said Max. “It depends on the intention, the method, and the skill being exercised in the creation of the curse, and we don’t have that information at this time.”

“In other words,” I said, really starting to dread the next cookie, “if Benny’s secretary had gotten hungry and broken open the cookie herself, or if she had tripped and dropped it while giving it to him . . . We don’t know which one of them would have died, but one of them would probably be toast?”

“Precisely.” Max looked at both of us with concern. “So if you take possession of a potential misfortune cookie, you must be very careful.”

“That does it,” Lucky said darkly. “We gotta put this killer out of business. What if Benny had given that cookie to one of his grandkids, for chrissake? What then? Huh?”

“Oh, my God,” I said, realizing the horrific extent of the Evil we were confronting. “Either the child might die as a result of breaking open his treat, or his grandfather might die right in front of him.”

Max nodded. “Lucky is correct. We must find and stop this killer. Otherwise—”

He was interrupted by Nelli suddenly jumping to her feet and growling menacingly at the closed door. We heard a footstep and realized someone was on the other side of it.

Lucky rose quickly, pulled a gun out of his waistband, and ordered me in a low voice, “Get under the desk and stay there. Now.”