Between a Wok and a Dead Place, page 9
“No. I mean, I crawled around our space, trying to find the access. But the pipes run into the hotel basement.” He drew one hand through the air, pointing. “Everything on that side of the wall, Oliver took care of. He handles all the property management.”
Oliver. Not Bobby or Abigail.
Curious that the plumbing for the restaurant wasn’t accessible from its own basement. That there was a wall. Old buildings. You never know.
“When the pandemic hit, my dad asked Bobby for a break on the rent,” Keith continued. “But he refused. I never saw him during our renovation, which is what made it so weird when he started showing up.”
“When was that?”
“Off and on, the last few weeks. After I saw the white guy in the suit taking pictures and making notes. That worried me. I mean, we have a five-year lease, but what’s to say they can’t sell for redevelopment and kick us out? I’m not sure we could survive another blow like that.”
This was the first concrete detail I’d heard about the family’s plans, and it was about as solid as cat litter.
“White guy, you said?”
“Yeah. Fortyish, balding. Not sure I’d know him again, frankly. After he took his pictures, he met up with an Asian guy and they came in. I was too busy to notice anything else.”
The dead man?
“The neighborhood’s changed since I was a kid bussing tables for my parents,” he continued. “I don’t know everybody anymore. And you see guys in suits.”
I scanned the room. None at the moment, but I knew what he meant.
“In fact, I saw the Asian guy this morning,” Keith added. “I got off the bus up on Jackson. He was going into that coffee shop up there.”
Not the dead man, then. And vague as the description was, I knew the coffee shop he meant. On the border between the CID and Pioneer Square, popular with both artistic types and business folk.
In this part of town, men in suits could be developers, bankers, lawyers, or real estate agents, with any number of reasons for scouting out the building that held the Gold Rush. Did they know about the hidden pharmacy? The Changs had not, despite having leased the restaurant for ages.
Whatever secrets the Gold Rush held, it was clear the current generations were intent on keeping them.
“One more question, then I’ll let you get back to work. Saturday on the food walk, we had some terrific dim sum. Traditional stuff.” I described the woman and her booth.
“Sounds like the Red Lantern. Family-owned, but Rose Zhwang runs it and she might have set up a booth for the food walk. You know how things work down here, right? I mean, if you want to do business with them, you can’t just walk in and say so. You have to eat their food. Drink their tea. Chat with no agenda. Then on your third visit, leave your card when you pay the bill. If they’re interested, they’ll call you.”
“You didn’t make me drink tea three times.”
“I’m a modern man.” He shrugged one shoulder. “Besides, Reed insisted your stuff was the best. And he was right.”
Speaking of tea, I could use some, but every seat was taken and no one looked ready to leave. Time to try the Red Lantern. I texted Roxanne. You ready for a cuppa?
She replied almost instantly. We’re headed upstairs. I’ll leave the door open.
Great—on my way!
From the lobby, I followed the voices to the second floor. I found Reed and Roxanne in a small room, the plaster walls a faded light green. A single bed stood against one wall, a dresser against the other. One straight chair. Plain muslin curtains hung at the single window, the outlines of a long-gone rug faintly visible on the wood floor. A radiator for steam heat.
“Hey, Pepper,” Roxanne said. “I was just telling Reed that in the late nineteenth century and early twentieth, these hotels served as temporary housing for single men, many of them Asian, but also some Italians and Norwegians. Most were on their way to jobs in the canneries or up in Alaska. These hotels were incredibly important to the community.”
The room was plain and impersonal, and a bit musty from disuse.
“From what I’ve seen so far,” she continued, “it appears that all the rooms looked like this originally. In the 1930s, when labor contracting slowed down, the hotel shifted to a mix of short-term lodging, like this room, and residential rooms, down the hall. During the Depression, the SROs provided a safety net. Single room occupancy.”
“Oh, we know about SROs,” Reed said. “There are still some in the Market, though they’re nicer now. And bigger. Sam lived in one.”
“Arf’s former owner,” I said to Roxanne.
“During World War II,” she said, “many of the hotels housed men coming to Seattle for jobs in the shipyards. A good number were Black. The CID was quite diverse in many respects.”
We followed her across the landing and down a longer hall, this one graced with a carpet runner, yellow and green vines on a dark red background.
She opened a door to a simple old-style hotel room, larger than the first room. Double bed, narrower than the modern version. Wrought iron bedstead, dresser, desk, table with hot plate, and two chairs. A sink in the corner. Plain cream-colored walls. “Most of the rooms on this wing are set up like this.”
“My dad said Bobby Wu closed the hotel after his father died and walked away,” Reed said, “but I didn’t expect everything to be exactly the way he left it. You could almost move in.”
“Not quite right,” Roxanne said. “The laborers’ rooms, like the one on the other hallway, were closed after the war. We think Francis Wu continued to run the SRO wing until around 1970, though demand had dropped well before then.”
“So the hotel was already closed before Francis died,” I said.
“Yes.” She shut the door behind us. “There’s one more room I want you to see.”
At the end of the hallway, she twisted a porcelain doorknob, cracked and crazed with age, and opened the dark paneled door.
This room was larger than the others, though it too held an old double bed, a pale green coverlet on the mattress, a thin bath towel draped over the foot. The iron bedstead and radiator had been painted a creamy white, chipped from age. Along one wall stood a maple chest of drawers and a matching dressing table with a bench, upholstered in green silk brocade. On top of the lace dresser scarf lay an ivory comb, brush, and mirror set, and a quilted cosmetic bag. A small table held a hot plate and a few dishes. A white porcelain sink was mounted on metal legs.
And in the corner stood a crib, a mobile hung with tiny stuffed animals clamped to the rail, so the child inside could watch and play.
I caught my breath. “Who lives here? Lived here? How long has it been this way?”
“I don’t know,” Roxanne said. “I haven’t had a chance to ask Oliver about it.”
“Wow,” I said. “Wow.” The walls were papered in a floral print, pink and white peonies on a yellow background. A pair of gold slippers, adult-sized but small, poked out from under the bed. “Was this room occupied after the rest of the place was vacated?”
“I think so. There’s one bathroom for every few rooms. Nothing personal in any of them. She, whoever she was, must have carried her things back and forth. You’ve got to see this.” Roxanne crossed the room and opened the closet. I glanced out the window to the alley below, then in the closet. It was full.
“She didn’t take her clothes?” I was astonished.
“Creepy weird,” Reed said, and I had to agree. “Is this the room where you found the letters?”
“What? What letters?” I asked.
“In here.” Roxanne opened a side drawer of the dressing table and lifted out a wooden box, a brass latch on the front. She lifted the lid to reveal a thick stack of papers. Then to Reed, “I’ll scan you copies of two or three.”
My confusion must have showed. Reed explained. “Roxanne found this box of documents, but they’re all in Chinese. I called my grandfather and he’ll try to translate them.”
“My Mandarin is decent,” Roxanne said to me. “But these letters are written in the old-style script, in a regional dialect, probably Taishanese. My usual translator, a prof at U Dub, is traveling right now. Any help Dr. Locke can provide will give us a jump-start.”
She closed the door behind us and we followed her down the hall. “I haven’t found personal items in any other rooms. I haven’t been on the top floor. Not sure what’s up there, besides Oliver’s apartment.”
“When did he move in?”
“Right around Christmas, I think. Shortly before he hired me.”
I drifted down the stairs behind the other two, still deep in their conversation. How much did Seetha knew about this place? Had she been in Oliver’s apartment? Doubtful. When Detective Tracy quizzed us in the lobby, she’d appeared as mystified by the hotel as the rest of us.
Back downstairs, Roxanne’s phone rang and she frowned at the screen before answering. After a brief exchange, she clicked off and turned to me.
“Your buddy the detective is on his way. Even two minutes with him and I’ll be desperate for that cup of tea.”
Tracy must have called from the sidewalk outside because in literally no time, he was in the lobby, with the forensics detective we’d met Saturday.
“Roxanne—Dr. Davidson—was showing us the hotel rooms,” I said, forestalling his demands to explain myself. “Reed is interested in historic preservation, particularly in the CID, and this place is—well, it’s intriguing.”
“Any theories?”
“Sorry. Have you identified the victim yet?”
“Nope.”
A movement outside distracted me. Officer Ohno was photographing the memorial and picking up the red envelopes. Hunting for clues?
“Detective,” I said, “the dead man was wearing a lion dancer costume. If he wasn’t part of a regular dance troupe, he might have rented it. I stopped in a costume shop in SoDo, not far from here.”
“And you make a habit of haunting these places, like you’re haunting my crime scene?”
“No reason to get snippy, Detective. It’s on my way to the warehouse. They don’t rent that particular costume, but there are other costumers in town. You might find a label identifying the shop the victim’s mask and clothing came from.”
Tracy grunted, then pulled out his phone. Dictated a text, followed by the bwoop of the message being sent. Then he gave us a pointed look. Time to leave.
Reed jogged up to Jackson Street to catch the bus back to the warehouse. Roxanne and I ambled down the sidewalk. I stepped aside to let an older woman pass. Instead, she stopped and poked me in the chest.
“You. Leave the past alone.”
Then she raised her face and though her eyes were hidden behind dark glasses, I got the point.
Not that I was going to listen to some stranger, five feet of attitude and fury bundled in a heavy coat, the collar turned up against the chill.
We watched the woman stomp away.
“Did that just happen?” I asked Roxanne. She looped her arm through mine and we went in search of tea.
THE RED LANTERN was a throwback, filled with hot, steamy smells. We took a chrome and linoleum table in the corner, sat on vinyl-covered straight-back chairs, and ordered a pot of dragon green tea. It came with a plate of sesame balls. The woman we’d met Saturday afternoon—Rose, according to Keith Chang—stood at the end of the lunch counter, by the cash register. She didn’t acknowledge me, but she knew I was here.
We sipped, and I told Roxanne what Keith had said about the men inspecting the building.
“He’s afraid they’re potential buyers,” I said, summing up.
“I might have seen them, with Bobby,” she said. “A couple of weeks ago? Outside, as I was leaving. Bobby was scowling. His tone was pretty harsh. Maybe they didn’t think it was worth what he wants.”
“Could be.” Property, I’d learned, meant different things to different people. Money, yes. Legacy. Security. Even, sometimes, love.
I got that prickly sense of eyes on me and though I knew I shouldn’t look, I did. I caught a glimpse of an old woman, one of those women you can tell don’t approve of you. My hair—short and spiky, prone to sticking out all over the place on damp days? Or because we were strangers?
“Back to work, Auntie,” Rose said. The old woman muttered a reply in Chinese, and I wondered if Roxanne could translate it, but she hadn’t been paying attention.
“A shame to let it sit empty all those years,” she was saying. “Especially when the neighborhood needs more housing.”
“The whole interior would have to be redone. Small rooms, bath down the hall—that doesn’t cut it anymore. Not to mention smoke detectors and sprinkler systems and an elevator. On the other hand, if that’s what they decide to do, the commercial tenants could stay put.” I sipped my tea, then plucked a sesame ball off the plate. “First there was the pharmacy. And now—”
“The woman and the baby.” Roxanne took the words right out of my mouth.
That, we couldn’t explain. We agreed that the clothes in the closet had been stylish, some quite trendy, for a young woman of twenty-five or thirty years ago. Why had she left them? Where had she gone?
And what about the baby? We’d scoured the dresser drawers and found nothing for a little one. Not a diaper or a onesie in sight.
We finished our tea and I left cash on the table, the tip generous but not too generous. I slid into my coat and saw Rose in the kitchen, stirring a wok. At the door, I resisted the urge to look back. I was just another customer who’d come in for a cup of tea.
BACK at the Gold Rush, the crime scene tape blocking the basement stairs fluttered loose. Voices drifted up. I edged my way down the stairs, too curious to resist the temptation.
Tracy and the forensics detective, whose name I’d forgotten, stood with a man in canvas work pants and a hard hat. The engineer or inspector, I guessed, though whether private or from the city, I had no idea.
“Bottom line, you’re saying my crime scene’s not at risk,” the other detective said, his frustration clear, “but you can’t tell me when this wall was closed up or why there’s a pile of bricks in the corner. Or whether that’s where the brick used in the crime came from.” He gestured to a stack of bricks beside another closed door, one my brain hadn’t registered Saturday. Access to wherever the plumbing was, as Oliver had said?
“Meaning you’re no help at all,” Tracy said, and I stifled a laugh. Not very well, and he spotted us standing at the bottom of the stairs. “Ms. Reece, this is a crime scene.”
“The tape was down,” I said.
“My fault,” said the engineer, or whoever he was, and Tracy shot him a look I knew too well.
“Oh, come on in, Spice Girl,” Tracy said. “And bring your friend. Maybe you two can be more help than this yahoo. Just don’t touch anything.”
Where was Detective Spencer? I missed her. Tracy was always nicer when she was around.
“I can tell you,” the man in the hard hat said, “that it’s no surprise to see boarded-up doorways in a building this old. Especially in this part of town. After the fire in 1889, a lot of basements became little more than storage spaces. This wood isn’t that old, but it’s a safe bet that this door was boarded up a good long time. Thirty or forty years.”
“Why would someone have covered over a door that recently?” I asked. “Safety issue?”
“Good guess,” hard hat replied. “Brick wall might have weakened in a tremor and someone took it down, then threw up a new wall. This building predates the turn of the century—the last century—so it’s been through half a dozen major quakes, and scores of minor ones. Inspections were required of all commercial buildings after our last major quake in 2001. Those are soft bricks, used in interiors. You could almost sneeze and knock one out.”
Inspections. One more reason Bobby Wu hadn’t wanted to reopen the hotel? Ensuring earthquake safety would be a major expense in any renovation plan.
“But just where those bricks came from in this maze or might have been used originally,” he continued, “I’d have to do a lot of prowling to venture a guess.”
“I don’t care where they came from,” Detective Tracy said. “I just want to know who used one to bash a guy dolled up like a lion in his ever-lovin’ head.”
At that, even the remaining walls seemed to shudder.
Eleven
Know yourself and you will win all battles.
—Sun Tzu, The Art of War
AN ELECTRONIC PING BOUNCED OFF THE BRICK WALLS. TRACY took his phone out of the pocket of his camel hair jacket and read the message.
“Officer Ohno’s upstairs with the Wus.” He pointed one finger toward the ceiling, then made a shooing gesture. I touched Roxanne’s arm. Tracy and the engineer followed us up the stairs, leaving the forensics detective behind.
Bobby Wu stood in the hotel’s compact lobby not like he owned the place, but like he’d rather be anywhere else. I didn’t blame him, not with a murder on the premises. I glanced at his wife, her face filled with the fear and confusion you’d expect, then back at him.
Beneath his black leather jacket, Bobby appeared to be trim and in good shape for sixty-something. Did he work out? I wouldn’t have been surprised. No reason the man couldn’t be both an athlete and a comic book dealer. He was a couple of inches taller than I, about five nine. Like his son, he had a narrow face, his hair neatly cut in a style reminiscent of that of Bruce Lee—or maybe I just had the late martial artist on my mind.
Roxanne reminded him who she was and introduced me.
“The curator,” Bobby said, then acknowledged me. “This is my wife, Abigail.”
He gestured, not quite touching her. She smiled politely, pale despite her makeup. Her coat and pants hung loose on her frame. Behind them, Officer Ohno stood with her feet apart, her hands behind her back, as if waiting for her next assignment.
“Any chance,” Tracy said, “now that the shock has worn off and you’ve had time to think, that you’ve come up with a name for the man in your basement?”
