The police are emerging from the brothel in ones and pairs. A mere trickle compared with the force that poured in minutes ago, like a broken dam of guns and searchlights. Almost all of them are leading people. Most, like Fung and the Brotherhood and the lounge clients, are in handcuffs. Others, like Yin Yu and Mama-san, are free. Some don’t come out at all.
I don’t see Dai or my sister anywhere. With every strange face that marches through the door, my heart drops another level, like air being slowly leaked out of a balloon.
Please. Don’t let them be dead—I’m not even fully finished with this thought when Dai’s face appears. He’s being pushed out of the brothel, his arms twisted in knots behind his back. His face is twisted, too—pain, pain, pain. I see the cuffs and the policeman prodding him on; panic rises.
I run to the officer. “You’re making a mistake!”
“Stand back,” the policeman says with a stern face, and gives Dai an extra push forward. Hurt and wince flare on my window-boy’s face, make me look closer at his shoulder. The sweatshirt there is tatters, torn and stiff with old blood. Underneath are bandages, white and rust. The same colors as my nautilus.
“No! You don’t understand! He was in there helping. To rescue me.” I move in front of them, blocking Dai’s forced path with my body. “You can’t arrest him.”
The blank wall of the officer’s face gives way to uncertainty. His eyes rove over Dai, and for just a second I believe I’ve convinced him.
“Ah. You found him.” The man from the Old South Gate steps next to me. His hands are shoved far into the pockets of his trench coat. The half-finished cigarette between his lips makes his words mumbly. “I was beginning to think you were a no-show altogether.”
“Sorry to disappoint.” Dai looks from me to the smoking man. His words take on the same sharpness he used when we first met. “I was too busy being tied up and tortured.”
The man sucks on his cigarette. It flares extra bright, like a lone dusk star. “It’s not my fault you got yourself caught. Did you find it?”
Dai shakes his head.
The man with the cigarette stands still for a moment. He exhales: air made of ash and sigh and disappointment. When all the smoke has cleared, he nods at the officer. “If you see Chan, let him know the ledger is still missing. Tell him to keep an eye out for it. Take this kid out with the rest. There’s a warrant for him.”
“Wait! No!” I shout. “You can’t do this.”
Trench coat man pulls the smoking roll from his lips. The movement sends sparks swirling through the air. Some land, harmless but bright, on my arm. “He’s a murderer, sweetie. We offered him his chance at redemption and he failed. Best say your good-byes.”
“You want the ledger?” I look at the man—smoke fills his lips like a foggy morning, hazing the air between us. “It’s in Longwai’s office! In the top drawer of his desk.”
Dai shakes his head. “It’s not there, Mei Yee. The drawer was empty.”
“But—but it can’t be.…” I keep talking so I won’t have to feel the sinkhole growing in my stomach. “It was there. I saw it! I saw it!”
I’m staring at Dai now, pleading for him to believe me.
His eyes are even deeper than they were before. Somber and yawning and full. There’s a smile on his face as he looks at me. “I’m glad you found her,” he says, and nods somewhere past me. I look back to see Jin Ling behind me, limping and shuffling through the cold. The blood she tried so hard to hide is now an undeniable dark on her dress.
“Get him out of here!” the man next to me barks, and waves a hand into the endless night of these streets. They yawn on either side of us, like the great mountain caves in our province. The ones the spirits lived in, waiting for sacrifices that stopped coming years ago.
“No!” I reach out, try to grab him, but the officer shoves Dai forward, rougher this time, off into the crowd of people.
It’s not the darkness of the street that devours him. It’s the crowd of black suits and handcuffs that finally hides him from my eyes. Instead, I see Longwai—hands bound tight behind him, being dragged by police through the trash and dirt. His one arm is bent the way Sing’s was so long ago, smearing blood and broken.
Part of me feels that I should be happy—seeing him like this. After everything he’s done. To me. To Sing. To all the other shivering, sapped girls gathered under the lone sapphire streetlamp. But I can only look at such brokenness and feel it inside me, echoing long and far, deeper than the darkness between stars.