Lien next found themselves in the buggy with Cook traveling to the newly built Hall of Justice on Washington and Kearny Streets. Officers Green and Riordan joined them, and soon the Chinatown squad walked together along the newly built streets.
Cook moved alongside Dolly and said, “The Chinese girl, Sai Mui, was brought from China as a paper daughter and forced into prostitution some months ago.”
Dolly nodded, keeping her chin lifted, although her stomach had plummeted. So Sai Mui had already suffered terror and abuse.
“She escaped the slave owner who made her work on May Fong Alley,” Cook continued, lighting another cigarette. “But she chose the wrong place to take refuge.”
“Not the mission home,” Dolly said in a quiet voice.
“Not the mission home,” Cook confirmed. “A rival tong group got ahold of her. Sai Mui’s slave owner demanded her back, but the rival tong refused, so the slave owner agreed to settle on a price for the girl.” He inhaled on his cigarette, then tossed it into the gutter. “The meeting should be taking place now . . . bartering over the price of a human.”
The disgust in his voice echoed that in Dolly’s mind.
Her step slowed as they approached the building. Officer Riordan skipped any knocking or shouting and instead tried the door first. It was locked, but he made quick work of opening it with a single strike of his sledgehammer.
The main level was empty, and they climbed two flights of stairs as silently as possible. Before they reached the top of the landing, Dolly put up a hand to tell everyone to wait. Moving up another step or two, she spotted a guard standing before a heavy door, tightly shut.
Dolly turned to Mei Lien. “Go up there and ask him to open the door. Tell him you have an important errand.” She could see that the brand-new interpreter was nervous, but Mei Lien stepped forward.
After a short conversation, the guard opened the door for her. Dolly hurried up the last few stairs with the policemen, and they pushed through the unlocked door.
“Stop there,” the doorkeeper called, but there was nothing one man could do against the five of them. So he shouted a warning to whoever could hear him in the building.
On the floor above, something crashed, and it sounded like furniture was being dragged around. Panicked voices rose. Dolly and her group pounded up the last set of steps, and Officer Cook banged on the door with his fist. “Open up! Or we’ll break this door down!”
The bolts slid open, and Dolly entered the sparse room.
More than a dozen Chinese men stared back at her, most of them sitting with folded arms.
“Where is Sai Mui?” she asked immediately, and Mei Lien translated in a trembling but determined voice. Dolly had no doubt that Mei Lien knew some of the men in this room.
“There are no girls here,” one of the tong said in a smooth voice.
Behind the man, the window was open; on instinct, Dolly rushed to it. Peering out, she saw a man below, looking up. When their gazes connected, he pointed upward. Had Sai Mui gone through the skylight? And the only place to go from there was to the next house.
She withdrew from the window and told Mei Lien and the policemen, “Follow me.”
They hurried out of the house and into the next, bypassing a guard who didn’t give their group any trouble. They searched every room but found no Sai Mui.
Dolly and Mei Lien checked in every closet and beneath each bed, calling for the young woman. The policemen rumbled through the house, moving furniture and tapping on walls.
Finally, Dolly stopped before a cupboard pushed against the bedroom wall at an angle. She wrenched the heavy piece from the wall and found a young woman crouched behind it like a mouse hiding from a cat. The young woman’s eyes were dark, her skin sallow with illness, and her lips were chapped and sore.
Dolly stooped and held out her hand. “Come with us, and you will be safe.”
When Mei Lien repeated the words in Chinese, Sai Mui nodded and grasped Dolly’s hand.
Dolly pulled the trembling girl to her feet, and the women flanked her as they walked out of the room and down the stairs. “We found her!” Dolly called out so the policemen could hear.
She didn’t miss Mei Lien’s tears of relief—and perhaps of remembered trauma. Dolly knew her own tears would come eventually.
When Officer Cook appeared at the base of the stairs