elbow out of the Japanese Tea Garden. “She doesn’t have the aurelia. She was supposed to have the aurelia, and she doesn’t. She doesn’t have it!”
“Stay calm, Z. Wong,” Muse whispers. “You’re attracting too much attention.”
“Stay calm? I’m freaking out!” This must sound like Zhu’s got two voices coming out of her throat, one answering the other. A devil woman? Oh, yeah. She can sympathize when the girl howls, fear, puzzlement, and dismay screwing up her face. “Muse, you will switch to subaudio mode. Now.”
“Assume she is the contact,” Muse insists, still blasting in projection mode. “She was there. Take her to the mission, and we’ll look for the aurelia.”
“Look for the aurelia? Look where?”
“I not go! I not go!” the girl wails.
“I don’t know,” Muse says. “I will analyze, okay? Ask her name. We believe she was called Wing Sing.”
Zhu seizes the girl by her shoulders. She’s much bigger than Zhu expected, as tall and thin as Zhu. Are they attracting attention? No. No one promenading in the park pays any attention to a woman dressed in Western clothes taking forcible custody of a scruffy Chinese girl. ”What’s your name?”
“I Wing Sing.” She points toward the Pacific Ocean. “I go home, Jade Eyes!”
“Wing Sing.” Zhu sighs with relief. “Thank goodness. Yes, home. That’s exactly where we’re going. We’re going to the home, Donaldina Cameron’s home. The nice mission on Sacramento Street.” Zhu points downtown, in the opposite direction.
“Not go to fahn quai!” Wing Sing cries, struggling. “I die first!”
“You’re going to be just fine.” Alternately pushing and pulling, Zhu wrestles the girl to the Park and Ocean Railroad station where they can catch the steam train downtown. Zhu puffs, sweat drizzling beneath her corset. The stays gouge her ribcage, making her breath catch. “When is the next train, sir?” she asks the conductor.
Now people in the passing crowd begin to take notice of her struggle. A buxom blond woman watches them shrewdly. The woman wears elaborate pink flounces and a grotesque hat studded with carcasses of Brazilian humming birds. A black brougham drawn by two lathered geldings waits at the curb. The driver of the brougham notices Zhu and Wing Sing, too.
“Well, miss.” The conductor, a well-whiskeyed fellow in a rumpled uniform, clicks open his pocket watch, checks it with drunken precision. “I reckon it’ll get here when it gets here.”
Zhu catches his small gesture to the driver. The driver knocks his whip handle on the brougham’s door. The conductor pockets the watch. He turns a gold coin through his fingers.
What is going on? A chill runs through Zhu. She picks up at once the covert communication between the conductor, the driver, and whoever waits in the brougham. All of them, on the lookout.
Suddenly three Chinese men leap out. Dressed entirely in black, they wear queues tightly braided, oiled, and wrapped in buns at the napes of their necks. Black slouch hats are pulled low over their foreheads, black slippers on their feet. One is a wiry little fellow, tattoos covering his hands, a curved knife tucked in his belt. The second is a fat man, diamond rings on every finger. Silent and steely-eyed, he surveys the crowd. The third is tall and gaunt, a black eyepatch over his left socket. Beneath his black overcoat, bandoliers of bullets are slung across his chest, two pistols visible in his belt.
The eyepatch spots Wing Sing first. In an instant, the men in black surround Zhu and the struggling girl.
“Highbinders!” shouts the buxom blond woman. “Say, fellas!” she says to the gentlemen standing around. “You gonna let them goddamn highbinders ruin our Fourth of July?”
The men laugh nervously, look away. Chinese business is Chinese business.
“Z. Wong, please exit immediately,” Muse whispers. “These are hatchet men. Enforcers for a tong.”
“Boo how doy,” Wing Sing whispers, going limp.
“Queues coiled to the left,” Muse says, opening a file. “Chee Song Tong.”
“I say, fellas!” shouts the buxom blond woman. “What kinda lousy cowards are ya, anyway? You gonna let them highbinders trouble a lady?”
“I’ve got no quarrel with you,” Zhu says to the eyepatch, boldly staring into his eye. “Let us go.”
“This our girl,” the eyepatch says. “We pay gold for her. We take now.”
“I don’t think so,” Zhu says, circling her arm around Wing Sing’s shoulders. “She’s mine.” The girl huddles passively, casting her eyes to the ground.
“Z. Wong, preservation of your person is the first priority,” Muse whispers. “Please review ‘The CTL Peril’.” Muse posts the text in her peripheral vision.