CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

––––––––

That evening, with shadow makers braced to his wrists, Creed stood back from the streetlamps on Union Street. Across the road, Ginger Guo’s mansion made the headquarters of the Brotherhood look like a horse next to a circus elephant.

Out front, the twisting metal gate and surrounding fence stood seven feet high. Lights shined behind curtains upstairs and downstairs. Creed spotted no one on the grounds, on the street, or looking out of the windows. The mansion’s front door stood open, no doubt to let in the cool night air after a warm day.

His shadow makers obscuring his presence, he approached the gate, touched its cold metal, and attempted to push it open, but the gate budged less than an inch. That was all right. Jenny would meet him soon.

As if sensing his presence, Jenny stepped into the doorway and stared in his direction. She descended the steps and traversed the cobbled path. Creed turned off his shadow makers when she was ten feet away.

"That's crazy," Jenny whispered. With a thick iron key, she opened the lock. The gate rattled as she pulled it.

Creed entered.

"They have gone, but this makes me nervous," she said. "Please watch yourself. Will that work in the light?"

"The shadows blend into the dark. In the light, I appear darker, like a shadowy ghost. So, no, not in the same way."

"Ginger and the other maids like to keep the lights on everywhere. The engines hum like a horde of locusts on the rear porch, and they belch steam." Jenny shook her head. "Come with me."

He followed her up the porch to the entry, a single door with a brass dragon-headed knocker. She shut it after he entered. They stood in a foyer with a door to the left, one ahead, and one to the right. Beside the left door, stairs ascended, but the foyer itself stood two stories tall. The window high above the door would let in light during the day, but now Tesla bulbs in faux sconces on the right brightened the room.

Creed pointed to the door at the top of the stairs. "Is that the only way upstairs?"

"Yes."

"It’s always locked?"

"Always," Jenny said.

A screech like wood scratching against wood came from upstairs.

Jenny asked, "Those are the sounds I told you about."

"Those aren't the maids?"

"No. I convinced them to go home at sundown. Remember, they don't—"

"They don't clean upstairs." Creed crossed his arms, lowered his head, and listened. Footsteps. Creaking.

An urge to open that door struck him and set his mechanical heart pounding. He imagined tearing the door off its frame, but no. His agitation over the case made that foolish course of action seem exciting.

How many people lived upstairs? Were they altered women like Sun Jing or something else? Now didn't seem like a good time to check. He aimed to find clues downstairs.

Creed stepped carefully to the base of the stairs and whispered to Jenny, "Where's Guo's bedroom?"

Jenny squinted at Creed. She shrugged and led him through the forward door. They faced a small dining room and kitchen, but then she turned and entered the hallway on the right. An open arch on the left revealed a room with a long table at one end and three shaded windows at the back. It featured an eclectic collection of paintings, including a suggestive nude of a portly woman similar to what one might find in a saloon or bordello, a rendition of tall mountains done in shades of brown and gray, Chinese characters filling the sky, and a modern, atmospheric picture of the ocean at sunset.

Next came a smaller room, double doors open, walls lined with full bookcases. Guo either liked to read or wanted to project an educated air.

At the end of the hall, Jenny and Creed entered the master bedroom. To the left, three windows showed the outdoors. Creed spotted her lavish bed, complete with a canopy one might have expected to find in a noble’s bedroom in the Middle Ages. Nightstands flanked either side. Guo saved her most erotic painting for her room. A framed, stylized picture hung above her bed, just under the canopy, of a man and woman having intercourse.

Creed checked the wall and found a light lever, which he shoved upward. Each small bulb in the chandelier flickered on. Across from the bed, a desk rested between two wardrobes.

"Don’t you see well in the dark?" Jenny asked.

"Most of the time. But writing on a page goes blurry." Creed opened the first wardrobe and found it stuffed with clothes. Western dresses, underskirts, and kimonos hung in the central part. Below them were a dozen neatly folded trousers, several pairs of boots, and a few high-heeled shoes.

He passed the desk, a simple thing with two drawers under the top and little ornamentation. When he tried opening the second wardrobe, the door held fast.

"Do you have a key to this?"

Jenny shook her head.

"That's all right." Creed took his lock-picking tools from his coat, opened them on the desk, and took out two pieces. He knelt to the small lock and set to work. In moments, he’d aligned the tumblers and smiled at the satisfying click.

Creed pulled the doors open and found five shelves. Identical notebooks filled three of them and encroached on a fourth. He pulled one out at random and flipped through. “A ledger,” he said, noting hundreds of business transactions in Chinese characters. He showed a page to Jenny.

“This is nothing,” Jenny said. “Laundry and restaurant expenses. Her husband died three years ago, but this is from nine years ago.” She pointed to numbers in a top corner displaying the year in Arabic numerals, 1868. “These were their shared businesses. She still owns them.” Jenny took the book and shuffled to a later page. “See here? She has listed donations to many local companies.”

This book came from the middle of the second shelf. Creed put it away and removed the last book from the fourth shelf.

This tome included a combination of English and Chinese. Creed recognized a pair of characters that meant Sun Jing.

"I’d say that’s a clue.” Creed tapped on the page beneath the letters.

“These are all women's names," said Jenny. "Four of them. Sun Jing ends here."

"Four weeks ago."

"Yes."

Creed removed his detective's notebook and pencil from another pocket. He wrote the Chinese characters and “Sun Jing "next to them. He added the other three, each on a line, and asked Jenny to translate. She pointed out the following names and explained them in turn: “Dai Qiuyue means ‘autumn moon,’ Kang Lanying means ‘blue quartz,’ and Yu Liqiu means ‘beautiful autumn.’"

"What are these?" Creed asked. "My guess? Men's names."

"They're not full names, just words. This one,” she said, pointing to the character, “means ‘donkey.’"

"One moment." Creed wrote each of the different character sets in that column, finding more than a dozen. He put "donkey" next to the first. Jenny translated the rest, which included ‘mouse,’ ‘robe,’ and ‘turd.’

After this list, Creed rolled his eyes. "These are her nicknames for the johns."

"Excuse me?"

"The men she sends the girls to, and for exorbitant prices. A hundred dollars? Three hundred?" He whistled. He wrote additional notes before flipping through the pages again.

He showed Jenny the bookplate with its large Chinese characters. “What does this mean?

"Ledger. The Jade Lake," said Jenny.

"That must be what she calls her business."

"Not a cow yard," said Jenny, "but privately sending out slave girls."

Creed sat on Guo’s firm bed to take additional notes. He planned to write every woman’s name. After managing about ten, he found increasingly high prices between ten and fifteen thousand dollars. Purchase prices for the women, Creed assumed. Did this represent Guo buying out their contracts from the cow yards or perhaps paying off the hospitals for their silence?

He found another recurring name and additional prices, these between one thousand and three thousand dollars. He jotted down the characters for the new name. “Jenny, what are all these prices for?”

She sat beside him, took the book, and pushed a lock of her black hair behind her ear. “The high thousands are purchases—how much the girls cost her.”

“That’s what I guessed. And the others?”

“Enhancement,” Jenny said.

“The mechanical parts.”

Jenny nodded slowly. “Yes, probably.”

Creed wondered if Guo fabricated the parts upstairs or if someone else did the work for her. It seemed unlikely this Chinatown philanthropist acquired Syndicate technology, but why not?

The front door banged open.

Jenny gasped, swept from the room, and moved down the hallway.

"Shit." Creed replaced Guo's ledger on the shelf and closed the doors. The wardrobe’s lock clicked. At the far side of the bed, Creed crouched down.

Jenny's voice rang out from the front in Chinese. By her tone, Creed guessed Jenny was scolding Guo, then using a comforting, though firm, tone the way one might address a misbehaving child or—

"Guo is drunk," Creed whispered.

Feet stamped along the hall and up to the bedroom door. Guo alternated between laughing and shouting, her voice high-pitched.

The door banged against the wall and the erotic painting above the bed bumped a few times as though the couple had become active for Guo's gratification. Though no doubt imperceptible to the mistress of the house, Creed heard Jenny sigh in relief that they couldn't see him.

The canopy drapes shifted, and Creed dared to peek over. Guo must have dropped her dress. She stood there swaying, topless, breasts hanging, knickers covering her crotch and legs. She dropped.

As her head hit the pillow, their eyes locked.

Creed froze. He expected her to scream, as she was facing his mask and metal eyes with their red glow.

However, no surprise, let alone recognition, crossed her face. Guo’s eyes shut. Creed waited for long moments, afraid any sound might wake her.

Jenny stepped to the side of the bed and waved for him to follow her. He stood and did. Before they snuck out the door, she turned off the lights.

Jenny continued down the hall, but Creed stopped at the study. On the way to the bedroom, he had seen one bookcase and two walls. Now, he regarded the third. Its first shelf was two feet high on a thick wooden base. This made no sense to Creed. He approached, not bothering with the light.

He pulled one of his guns. At the door, Jenny gasped.

Creed held a finger to his lips and used the pistol to pry the front panel open. He feared that hidden nails might creak. Instead, though tight, the hidden door opened.

Creed waved Jenny over. She flipped on the lights above and approached.

"Oh, my," she whispered. Inside, filling two shelves, lay a variety of mechanical parts. These included segments identical to those on Sun Jing’s necklace and bracelet plus a number of tools: screwdrivers, wrenches, and hammers.

"She's involved, all right," said Creed. "These strike me as spare parts. Does she operate on the girls upstairs?"

Jenny looked back. "Do you have what you need now?"

"I do." Creed nodded curtly. "You've been the perfect helper. Thank you."

Creed followed her to the foyer, where he put his pencil and notebook back in his coat.

Jenny held her hands together and gave him a brief nod, which he reciprocated. "Mr. Creed, will you wait for me on the street until I get out?"

"I can walk you home with my shadows on. You’ll appear to be alone."

She gazed into his eyes and nodded. "Thank you."

Creed flicked on his shadow makers at the bottom of the front porch. He waited for Jenny at the gate. The walk lasted more than a half hour, but he didn’t mind. It gave him time to think.