Autumn Bridge (21 page)

“You’re going to write stories about her.”

“I’m thinking about it.”

“I have an idea you might like.”

Makoto laughed. “You never read anything but business reports.”

“If you write it, I’ll read it. I even have a title for you.”

“You do?”

“Yes,” Stark said, “I’d call it
The Escape of the Chinatown Bandit
.”

“Catchy title,” Makoto said. Stark could see Makoto still wasn’t sure how much he knew. “Makes you want to know what happens.”

“What happens is, the Chinatown Bandit’s identity is about to be exposed,” Stark said. “The big surprise in the story, he’s not Chinese at all.”

“He’s not?”

“No,” Stark said, “he’s not. Now, two things can happen, both bad, but one’s far worse. The better possibility, he’ll be arrested by the police and spend the next ten years in prison, if he manages to survive that long. I doubt there are many inside San Quentin interested in literature.”

“That’s the better?” Makoto said. “Sounds grim enough. What’s the worse?”

“He’ll be murdered by angry Tongs,” Stark said, “chopped up alive with a Chinese meat cleaver, most likely, because they’re none too happy with the way he’s been causing trouble for them by masquerading as Chinese. The Chinese meat cleaver, that’s because the Bandit’s been using one in his robberies, to make sure people think he’s Chinese.”

With a straight face, Makoto said, “That’s a nice touch, the Chinese meat cleaver. I wouldn’t have thought you so imaginative.”

“I have my moments.”

“Your story seems headed inexorably for tragedy,” Makoto said. “You should let me work on it a bit. I can probably come up with a better finale. Readers prefer happy endings.”

Stark said, “Don’t bother. I have the ending all worked out.”

“So which is it? Prison or death?”

“Neither. Because there’s another surprise. The Bandit’s doting father saves his foolish son by shipping him off to Canada before the police or the Tongs can get their hands on him.”

“Canada?”

“That’s right, Canada,” Stark said, “and not anyplace in the northland famous for its scenery, either. The Bandit spends a year in Ontario learning about iron mining firsthand.”

Makoto rubbed his chin in a theatrical gesture of thought. “Mexico would be better, from a dramatic standpoint. The tropical climate is more romantic. And Mexican silver mines suggest adventures to come more than Canadian iron mines.”

“The Bandit isn’t going to have any more adventures,” Stark said. “Once he’s gone long enough to be forgotten, he’ll return to San Francisco and take his proper place in the management of the Red Hill Consolidated Company. Is that understood?”

“We should consider that prospect open to discussion. The son is not always like the father.” Did he flinch? Makoto thought he did, as he always seemed to do when the matter of their similarities — or, more precisely, their dissimilarities — arose.

“The matter is not presently open to discussion,” Stark said. “And before you pack, bring down the gold and ivory bracelets Mrs. Berger lost.”

“Yes, Father. What am I packing?”

“Whatever you want. You’re leaving in one hour.”

“Is such haste really necessary?”

“It most definitely is, Makoto.” Stark’s voice betrayed agitation for the first time. “Do you think I was joking about the police and the Tongs?”

Makoto sighed and turned to leave.

“One question,” Stark said.

“Yes.”

“Why?”

The son is not always like the father. That was an understatement, to be sure. Perhaps it would have been better to phrase it as a question. Why is the son so unlike the father? But, of course, as Professor Dykus would say, the question was clearly implied in the statement, which was just as clearly the cause of his father’s unconcealable discomfiture. Involuntary reactions, his mother had told him, were also indications of truth and falsehood.

When had Makoto first noticed the dissimilarities? Late in childhood, he had recognized that he resembled his mother far more than his father.

That is because you are half Japanese, his mother had said, and our blood is strong.

He accepted the explanation because any reason was better than none, and his mother, who had begun teaching him the secrets of the arts of the real and the unreal at the age of five, had never lied to him. So far as he could tell. Lately, it had occurred to him that she was the master and he was the student, and surely she had kept some secrets of the arts to herself. If anyone was capable of escaping detection in a lie, it would be a master of lie detection, would it not?

The birth of his sister Angela Emiko when he was seven triggered his first doubts, and they were increased by the arrival two years later of his youngest sibling, Hope Naoko. Like him, they, too, were half Japanese. Yet, unlike him, they exhibited signs of his father’s American half, as well as his mother’s Japanese. Both Angela and Hope had medium-brown hair. Angela’s eyes were light brown, and Hope’s were as blue as her father’s. In physical dimensions, they split the difference between their parents. In noticeable contrast, Makoto had black hair and dark-brown eyes, like his mother, and although he was considerably bigger than she was, he was nowhere near his father’s size.

Blood is weaker in women than in men, his mother had said, explaining the difference.

By this time, though he saw no sign of deception, he found it difficult to completely accept his mother’s answer. For one thing, he was older. For another, he knew more about the world. His science and mathematics tutor, Mr. Strauss, was an enthusiastic follower of Gregor Mendel, a scientist, monk, and fellow Austrian. What Makoto learned from him concerning Mendel’s findings in plant hybridization seemed confirmed in his sisters and denied in him. Odd, at the very least. And finally, three months ago, when he met Siu-fong, unacceptable.

Siu-fong had light-brown hair and green eyes. My father Englishman, she said. Blood is weaker in women, his mother had said, and Siu-fong seemed to verify this. Her English half was as visible as her Chinese. Then he met her brother, Hsi-jian. He was a masculine version of Siu-fong. What would his mother say about this? That Chinese blood was weaker than Japanese? Mendel said otherwise.

Mr. Strauss, in discussing genetics, had cautioned him that an exact science had not yet been established, particularly as it related to more complex organisms. The matter of recessive and dominant traits, he said, became ever more difficult. Consider human beings in contrast to bean plants. The potential number of elements that play a part in determining those traits boggles the mind, does it not? Makoto agreed that it did. And yet…

He thought of confronting his parents, but quickly abandoned that idea. His mother’s denials would be unshakable, and his father — or, perhaps more correctly, his stepfather — committed to the lie, if lie it was, would never yield the truth.

Assailed by an agony of doubt and despair, Makoto grew vengeful. But upon whom was he to wreak revenge? What was the wrong? Who were the perpetrators? And he, how had he been wronged? He was rich, perhaps the richest twenty-year-old in San Francisco. He could not deny that he was disdained to a certain extent by members of his own social class, thanks to his race, but no one insulted him to his face. The Stark fortune and Matthew Stark’s political connections prevented that, and if they didn’t, a more fundamental fear did.

Five years ago, a certain rival of Stark’s in the burgeoning sugar business was found floating in the bay. He had been partially devoured by sharks, but enough of his upper body remained to reveal a gunshot wound in his torso that penetrated straight through his heart. Though competition from that quarter disappeared, which was to Stark’s obvious advantage, there was nothing to suggest that he had anything to do with the man’s unfortunate and mysterious demise. One of the city’s scandal-mongering newspapers thought otherwise, and did a series of stories on other unsolved crimes linked to Stark, including some utterly laughable fabrications about gunfights in the Wild West and brutal murders in Japan. They did this without naming him, of course, but the identity was obvious. Within two weeks of the first story, the building housing the newspaper burned down, with the editor-publisher in it. There was no indication of any cause other than accident. The man was a notorious drunk. According to the fire chief, the victim had probably knocked over a kerosene lantern when he’d fallen into his usual late-night alcohol-induced stupor. The mere possibility of a more sinister cause, however, was quite enough. Everyone was always very polite, if not exactly welcoming and friendly.

Three years ago, Makoto had left his home tutors behind and matriculated at the University of California, which had in recent years moved to its new campus in the Berkeley Hills. It was his first real experience among strangers his own age. And, unfortunately, among those strangers was a beefy young man named Victor Burton, whose father was a power in the Working Man’s Party, a virulently anti-Chinese group which was favored to win the governorship in the next election. Burton, who was apparently unable to distinguish Chinese from Japanese, or either from Negro, insisted on addressing Makoto alternately as “yellow nigger” and “Chink.” Makoto, on his father’s advice, ignored him, though Burton sometimes made it difficult. One day, Burton was absent from classes, and his fellow students all seemed unusually edgy. Makoto eventually learned that Burton had suffered an assault the previous night on his way home from a tavern, by a party or parties unknown. The assailants, whom Burton neither saw nor heard, broke his right leg at the knee, his right arm at the elbow, and his jaw in its center. The nature of his injuries made it impossible for Burton to use crutches or speak intelligibly, necessitating his withdrawal from the university.

With his departure, it could once again be said that everyone was very polite.

Makoto asked Shoji and Jiro, the two Japanese clerks in the Red Hill Consolidated Company, if they knew anything about what had happened to Burton. He asked them during their weekly training session in unarmed combat, at which both men were highly adept, having been samurai attached to Mr. Okumichi before coming to California. Makoto’s conversations with them were in Japanese, as they were with his mother.

“We heard about it,” Shoji said. “Bad luck, eh?”

“Bad luck,” Jiro said, “but I understand the young man in question was not of good character. Bad luck tends to follow such people.”

“Wait, Makoto-san, that is not the right grip.” Shoji took Makoto’s hand in his own. “Relax. If you tighten, I can feel you. The most effective hold is one that no one knows is there.”

Makoto said, “You didn’t have anything to do with it.”

“With what? Burton?” Shoji looked at Jiro. Both men shrugged. “Why would we? We don’t even know him.”

“Look on the bright side,” Jiro said. “He was not of good character. Your study environment is therefore improved by his absence.”

“Attention!” Shoji said, and threw Makoto head over heels. If he hadn’t pulled the throw at the last moment before impact, Makoto would have sustained a broken shoulder. As it was, he landed on the hard
tatami
mat with a thud that drove all the air from his lungs.

“You see?” Shoji said. “You didn’t feel the grip, so the throw was a big surprise. Remember that, Makoto-san.”

“I will,” Makoto said.

So the Chinatown Bandit was born, not out of vengeance after all, but from a need to fight his own battles, on his own terms.

The housebreaking began as a way of establishing for himself how vulnerable other people were, especially people who thought their wealth and social position put them out of reach of the riffraff. Up the side of the house using clawed gloves and sandals, dressed all in black, as dark as the night. Survey the bedrooms, listen to snatches of dinner-table conversation drifting up the stairs, look through jewelry boxes, closets. He ceased these entries when he inadvertently caught a glimpse of Meg Chastain, a girl he’d known all his life, climbing out of the bath. His embarrassment was so acute, the very thought of secretly entering another house made him blush.

But once he had begun, it was difficult to stop entirely. Houses were out. That left the streets of the city. What to do there? Robin Hood? Steal from the rich and give to the poor? Stealing from the rich appealed to him. But give to what poor? Most of the poor in the city were Chinese, or white laborers who hated them. Neither seemed to offer a promising pool of charitable recipients.

Then one day, while lunching at the Jade Lotus, he caught a glimpse of a young woman who at first he almost mistook for his sister Angela, unaccountably dressed in a Chinese
cheong-sam
gown. On closer inspection, he saw the congruities were superficial and entirely due to similar mixed parentage. The attraction thereafter was not love or sex, but the implication suggested by her existence, the existence of her brother, their similarities to his own sisters, and the dissimilarities between all of them and himself. How likely was it that he was who he was told he was, namely, Matthew Stark’s son? The human evidence strongly suggested that it was not very likely at all.