Middle Of Nowhere

The woman reminded Boldt of Orson Welles in a muumuu. She wore a piece of black embroidered silk big enough to wrap a small car. On her shoulders pink hummingbirds flew toward vivid red blossoms. Tiger faces with sequined eyes roared from her ribs. Ivory bone buttons speared through silk loops and strained at her enormous girth. He felt grateful she wore her teeth, for in the past he had found it hard to understand her pidgin English without them. Her eyes appeared as black half moons beneath the arcing Chinese curve of her painted eyebrows, her face in a permanent blush behind the applied rouge, puffy cheeks reminiscent of Dizzy Gillespie.

   Mama Lu sat enthroned in a huge rattan chair, a gigantic rising sun woven into the chair back above her, looking like a second head. Two black enameled chests flanked her, their surfaces as lustrous as mirrors. The second-story room where she met them was rather dingy, accessed by a narrow stairway from the butcher shop of the Korean grocery store below, but the room's contents belonged in a museum collection, as did this woman.

   "Mr. Both," she said. She had never pronounced it correctly.

   "Great Lady," he said, "allow me to introduce one of my detectives, Roberta Gaynes."

   "Mama Lu," Gaynes said, using the woman's street name.

   "Roberta," Mama Lu returned. To Boldt she said, "I heard of Ya-Moia. Sent small gift to hospital."

   Boldt imagined something grandiose despite her surface modesty.

   Placing a pudgy, swollen pale hand on her enormous bosom she said, "Heart made sad by this."

   "It's why I've come," Boldt explained.

   "Sit," she instructed.

   "We won't be staying," Boldt said, "but thank you."

   "You must eat," she said, looking him up and down. "You are not eating. Why? A woman, or work?"

   Boldt felt his face flush and wished that Gaynes was not there to witness it. He said quickly, "We're after the person who did this to LaMoia."

   "And Mama Lu can help?" the woman inquired hopefully.

   "A gun dealer named Manny Wong. We think he's had contact with the individual responsible for LaMoia."

   Gaynes added, "We mean no trouble for Mr. Wong."

   When Mama Lu squinted at a person, it felt as if all the lights in the room were dark, and a hot spotlight switched on in their place. Gaynes took a small step backward.

   "Police always trouble," Mama Lu informed her. To Boldt she said, "Present company excepted. What is offer?"

   "She's right," Boldt said, indicating Gaynes. "No tricks. All we want to do is talk to Manny Wong. Far as I'm concerned, when he walks out of that interview room I forget his name and ever having heard it."

   "Me too," Gaynes said, though Mama Lu didn't want to be hearing from her.

   "Just questions," the Great Lady repeated, testing them.

   "That's all," Boldt confirmed. "Answers to those questions."

   She had to physically turn her wrist with her other hand. The watch face hid in a massive gob of silver and pieces of turquoise the size of quarters. "You will be at Public Safety in one hour?" she checked with him.

   "That'll work," Boldt agreed.

   "He comes in voluntarily," she reminded. "If he's helpful, you return favor next time he may need it."

   "I can do that," Boldt assured her. The trade-offs bothered him and always would—they kept him awake at night, this long list of favors owed, but he never let them affect his negotiations. You couldn't work the streets based solely on principle; it just wasn't possible. Deals begot deals.

   Mama Lu sucked at her front teeth. Boldt feared they might be about to fall out, and he wanted to spare himself the sight, as well as her the embarrassment. She said, "I do this for Ya-Moia and Peggy Wan." Addressing Gaynes, she explained, "My niece. She like Ya-Moia very much."

   Gaynes nodded. Boldt noticed the beads of sweat on her upper lip. Not much could make Gaynes break out.

   "Soup?" She tried again.

   "Rain check?" Boldt asked, but then thought she wasn't familiar with the expression. "Another time," he said.

   She pouted and nodded. "You wait too long to visit poor old woman," said one of the richest women in the city. "Soup always hot," she offered.

   Boldt looked at his own watch for the sake of reminding himself. "One hour?" he asked.

   "No worry, Mr. Both. Mama Lu not forget." She smiled, the dentures pearly white. "Not forget anything."

* * *

Manny Wong carried his large head on bent, subservient shoulders, and peered out of the tops of his eyes, straining to catch some of the glass in his smudged bifocals. His forehead shone. His ears, too large for his body, looked like small wings. Boldt sensed a wolf in sheep's clothing. The man had thin, moist lips and bad teeth that whistled with some words.