Hot Poppies by Reggie Nadelson Read Free Book Online Page A

didn’t. I wanted painkillers. Kathe gave me some Percodan while I called Lily who was still out. I left a message: see you tomorrow. In my apartment, the women made nervous conversation and stopped me from drinking a bottle of Scotch with the pills, while I somehow canceled my credit cards.
    Eventually a ratty-looking white guy with rasta hair showed up and charged me three hundred bucks to change the locks.
    â€œEmergency overtime,” he said. “It’s snowing.”
    I was an accident of the freaky weather. It was just a couple of creeps cavorting in the snow. Muggers, I muttered, a couple of angry specimens with time to kill. I wanted to believe. How could there be a connection? Only paranoia could make me think I was a target.
    â€œI’m next,” Pansy said. “Dawn’s in trouble,” Mr Tae said. “Help me,” said Hillel. Then someone threw a spike at my head.
    Eighteen hours after Hillel calls me, I’m in something and I don’t know what it is.
    That night I was more numb than scared. The next morning I would be shit-scared, but that night, after it happened, after Lois and Kathe went home, I swallowed more painkillers, and before I passed out, I crawled to the phone and dialed Jeremy Chen.

5
    â€œShe didn’t die from being cut,” Jeremy Chen said. It was the next morning. We were in the restaurant at the Chinatown Holiday Inn. He examined his gold cigarette lighter and tossed me a menu. “You want any of this shit?” He leaned back, a sleek, good-looking guy, medium height, chunky, with tough thighs like a body builder. Tight black jeans. A black turtleneck, a fleece shirt. And silk thermals. In the cold, he always wore silk thermals, he told me. Tossed over the back of his chair was a white jacket. A Coco Katz, he said. It must have cost five hundred bucks. For a guy with his macho posturing, only Chen’s mouth was wrong. It was a tight round mouth with plump lips, a mouth shaped like an asshole. Literally.
    â€œArt, you listening? This girl did not buy it from the blade. She was fucking strangled first. Piano wire,” said Chen. Then he waved at a waitress. “Where’s my fucking coffee?”
    â€œWhat are we talking about here?”
    â€œYou tell me.” He held out a red and gold box of Dunhills.
    â€œI thought we were talking about Dawn Tae. I thought that’s why you called me.”
    â€œYou called me. I left the message and you called,” Chen said, as if the distinction mattered. The waitress brought coffee and toast and Chen buttered a piece.
    The chairs were fake black lacquer, the napkins stiff pink linen, the plants green and dusted. Trapped by the storm that had dumped two feet of snow on the city overnight, disgruntled tourists drank orange juice and sulked. Three Chinese guys in Armani shouted into portable phones; the oldest wore his cashmere coat over his shoulders and smoked a stinky little cigar.
    Chen put down his toast, glanced at the old man’s coat and said appreciatively, “Nice. Vicuna.”
    â€œWhatever you say.” My legs were killing me.
    â€œLook, man,” Chen said. “I can’t fucking help you with Dawn Tae. I can’t stalk her. Billy Tae knows my uncle. He thinks that’s how it works, the old way, favors, associations. I don’t have the time and if I did I wouldn’t fucking do it. If the old boys think she has a problem with some kind of shit, let them put her into Betty Ford. Look, I was in school in England with Pete Leung for a while. At the end of the day, it’s Pete’s bloody business. Ask me, he could fucking slap her around a little.”
    Chen’s accent was a mess, so was the lingo. He’d grown up in London, he told me, he worked there a while. He came to New York, became a citizen. He talked part New York, part Brit. The swearing got on my nerves. Some days, it’s like the whole city has Tourette’s syndrome, but