Sitting by the half-crowded dance floor with a view of both entrances, I waited. I imagined Larry and Kay making their rounds. A drink at the bar. Kay saying she wanted something expensive. Larry telling her to get whatever she wanted, flashing a stack of fresh twenties when he paid. Her prompting him. Didn’t he have to pay Anthony Qiu? And Larry’s response: Fuck Qiu. Fuck Winslow Wong. Fuck Chris Chambers. This was his money and he was through paying those punk bitches.
Then on to the next bar, and hopefully word trickling back to Wong, then to Qiu, then delegated to Chambers.
And me, nursing a bottle of Dark Matter, waiting for my movie to unfold.
My phone buzzed, incoming text. Sonia’s number. She was parked on a residential street near Boundary, waiting for the headlights of Chambers’s white Lexus to snap on. Her text said: IN CAR. ALONE. LEAVING.
Chambers might be carrying a gun. He might also bring friends. There was no way this wasn’t going to end ugly, but I didn’t want a bloodbath. I had my flashlight. Kay had bear spray. Sonia would have her sidearm.
Out back people smoked on the wooden porch. The steep geography of the waterfront put the bar’s entrance at street level and the porch ten feet above an alley. I had a camera over the back door, four inside the bar, and two covering the street out front. All of them feeding into a laptop I’d stored in the bar’s small office.
An hour passed. At twenty to two Larry Tranh and Kay walked in. They made for the bar. Kay stayed in character, didn’t look around, didn’t seem nervous. I felt a surge of pride. Tranh seemed jittery and I wondered if he was having second thoughts. I couldn’t blame him—it was his head. I hoped the same cockiness he’d exuded for the last few days would shame him into carrying through with the plan.
I texted Kay the words OFF THE HOOK, our code for “everything on track.” I watched her show it to Larry, laughing, as if it were a friend’s comment.
Sonia’s texts became one-word updates as she shadowed Chambers through the bars along Main. I bought another beer. My adrenaline was rising. I began to fidget, tapping my feet against the club music emanating from the dance floor. That awful disco version of Gordon Lightfoot’s “If You Could Read My Mind.” All the laws against secondhand smoke, not a one for secondhand sound.
2 BLKS, Sonia texted. I thumbed the keypad of my phone, typing TIME TO DANCE and sending it to Kay. I watched her peel herself off from Larry and cross to the dance floor, joining the dozen or so dancers.
NOW, Sonia texted.
Staring over the mouth of my bottle I watched Chris Chambers push the front door open and stride in. He was decked out all in black. I watched him scan the dance floor and tables, then fix on Larry at the bar, gabbing to Steve.
It was quick. Larry had turned around and Chris was already at the bar. Something in his hand glinted, a gun, and he struck Larry full in the face, knocking him back into the bartop. Chambers struck him again. Not a gun, something else.
Larry sprawled. Chambers grabbed him by the hair and collar and started for the back exit.
I could’ve stopped him from taking Larry outside. I didn’t stand up. Didn’t even look up, not until the back door had swung shut. I wanted that perfect image on film, the full entry and exit. When I trimmed that footage, it would tell a whole story.
When the back door swung shut I sprang for it and crashed through. I saw Chambers, his back to me, arms on Larry who was bent backward over the porch railing. Trying to throw him over. The porch and stairs had cleared out rapidly.
I seized Chambers from behind and pulled him off. We back-pedaled, hitting the wall. Chambers struggled free. Larry had sunk down to the porch floor, clinging to the guardrail post. Chambers kicked him, not even turning to see who’d restrained him.
“Off him.” Kay’s voice, followed by a blast of bear spray that caught Chambers in the face.
Chambers thrashed and fell forward, cursing, rubbing at his eyes. My own eyes watered. Kay pulled Larry to his feet and they ducked back inside.
I thought of tossing Chambers over the rail and to hell with the cameras. He deserved it and more. But I wanted him unscathed. Any contusions, he could say Larry had done it before entering the bar. It would be a cop’s word, a white cop’s word, against an Asian gambler’s. Better that Chambers stayed unharmed. You want your animals healthy and clean before you slaughter them.
I moved inside and retrieved the laptop from the office. Kay and Larry had left, hopefully with Sonia in her Mazda. The bar patrons were animated with theories and stories of other fights. The dancers danced on.