Free Bless the Bride by Rhys Bowen Page A

you to abandon the quest.”
    He took my elbow to steer me across the Bowery. At this hour it was full of women doing their morning shopping for the day’s meals while a gaggle of children clung to their skirts or raced ahead. The moment we turned into Mott Street the contrast was absolute. Here was silence and emptiness. There were no women and no children. We passed a couple of young Chinese men wearing the dark blue baggy jackets and pants that seemed to be the uniform of the Chinese. Their hands were tucked into their sleeves. They avoided my gaze and hurried by, heads down. I felt a stab of pity for them, living amid so much hostility and knowing that they would never have the chance to truly belong here, to get married and live normal lives.
    The pity was short-lived, however, as Frederick Lee grabbed my elbow again and shoved me forward at a quicker pace. “Those men,” he whispered. “They are Hip Singers.”
    “What kind of singers?” I looked back with interest.
    “Don’t look at them,” he hissed. “Pretend they are invisible.”
    “What’s the matter with them?” I too found myself whispering.
    “Hip Sing is the rival tong,” he said. “Have you not heard about the tong wars? There has been terrible bloodshed between Hip Sing and On Leong, which is our tong. At the moment there is a truce, but it’s very fragile and the least little thing can set sparks flying again.”
    “I see,” I said, realizing now why the man yesterday had looked up and down the street before he hurried away. “So are tongs like gangs?”
    He looked shocked. “Oh, no, not at all. They are benevolent societies. They offer us protection and loans and even a place to stay. Like your American gentlemen’s clubs.”
    “Our gentlemen’s clubs don’t often condone killing each other.”
    “We have to defend the honor of our tong if the Hip Sing mob kills one of our own,” he said. “They are not to be trusted. We are a merchant’s association made up of civilized men; they are a bunch of rabble who work in the laundries and the cigar factories.”
    He stopped talking as a door opened and two elderly men came out, each carrying a cage with a bird in it. They held the cages up as they walked solemnly down the street.
    “What was that?” I asked.
    “They are walking their birds. They do it every morning so that the caged birds get fresh air,” he said. “Just as you Americans walk your babies in their buggies.”
    “You say ‘we Americans,’” I said to him. “Actually I’m Irish. I’ve only been here two years and I don’t think of myself as American yet. But you were born here. Don’t you think of yourself as American?”
    “I would if I felt that I belonged here,” he said. “But as the child of a Chinese man, I can never become a citizen. So I will never truly belong.”
    “Never become a citizen, even if you were born here?”
    “That’s right. Thanks to the Exclusion Act. But I wouldn’t belong in China either. I am neither fish nor fowl.”
    “That must be hard for you.”
    He shrugged. “It is my fate. There’s not much I can do about it.”
    We reached the storefront of the Golden Dragon Emporium. I noticed that it was next door to a building that proclaimed itself as the On Leong headquarters. So my employer must be heavily involved with the tong to have set up shop beside them. Again I waited until Frederick Lee informed me that we could go up to Lee Sing Tai’s apartment. It was a complete reenactment of the day before. Waiting until the boy admitted us. Waiting in front of the screen until we were told to enter and the man himself sitting as before, in the high-backed carved chair. The drapes were half drawn and shadows hovered in the far corners. I glanced back at that curtain from which someone had observed me yesterday. I wondered who that person had been and whether he was there again, but I decided it wouldn’t be wise to ask questions. Instead I stood in the doorway until my