Mie Hammer - Chinatown

Ivy didn't say much on the drive home. She seemed lost in a world of her own, pulling the fur coat tight around herself and tucking into the corner of the car's front seat. After reaching the apartment, Ivy disappeared into the bathroom for a long time. Going over to the bathroom door, Mike could hear the sound of a shower and sobbing.

Mike mixed himself a drink at the bar, vodka martini very cold. He kicked back on the couch.

After a while Ivy came out, wrapped in towels. She perched on the couch with him, as far away as possible, not meeting his eyes.

"I went to kill him, Mike, you believe that. I I had way in and I did it. I got into office."

Mike grunted noncommittally.

"Mike., it was only way. I told him Lin Fat sent me to make up, to make nice. I think he believe me, Mike, I rearry did."

Mike grunted again.

"He take me in his office and I sit on desk. I let the fur coat fall down. You know I have nothing on under."

Ivy continued to avoid Mike's eyes, staring at the floor between them as if it held some fascination for her.

"He's old man, Mike. Old, wrinkly and pervert. He look at me sitting on his desk naked, only that fur coat up around my legs and he pull out his little dick and play with it. He's gross and pot bellied like pig, Mike. He don't come close and he don't touch me. He just reer at my tits and wank himself."

"Okay," Mike said.

"He call in hatchet-men. A big Féi zhū. He huge and ugly. The Féi zhū strip his black suit and tightie whities off and walk to me. His ugly dick was already up and waving around as he walk over. His balls were like a horse, hairy and hang to his knees. He grin at me, Mike, his fat lips pull back and show his rotten teeth. He put his fat hands on my breast and he squeeze hard.

Ivy took a moment to glance quickly up at Mike, then returned to staring at the floor.

"I kick him in the nuts, Mike. I kick him as hard as I can with pointy shoes and hurt him bad. I kick his nuts right back up into his belly. He bend forward at the waist and his head was close me so I stuck him with push knife. He go down with blood shoot from his neck. He have this stupid look on fat face, like he not believe what happening to him. Then big boss start screaming and many goon came in, grab me and take me out his office. That when you show up, Mike."

Mike pulled out a cigar case and opened it, removing a fat Cuban cigar, a Juan Lopez Seleccion No.1, and carefully clipped the end off.

"Mike I don't want go there like that, but it's only way to get close enough."

He peeled off a match and struck it between the matchbook covers, brought it up to the cigar tip and puffed it alight.

"I thought I get close enough to knife him, but he know, Mike, he know."

Mike knew she wanted him to tell her it was alright. He just didn't feel like telling her it was. It didn't feel alright.

"Mike," Ivy said beseechingly, and he pulled her down onto his shoulder. They stayed like that a long time, on the couch, until her breathing changed to that of sleeper. Mike was thinking about how nice it was to have her there with him. Wishing it could last.

Mike picked up and carried her into the bedroom. He laid her carefully on the bed and pulled a cover over. Then he sat in the nearby La-Z-Boy, thinking and smoking the cigar.

The Tong was not going to let this affront go. They would come after Ivy, sure as Kennedy would be the next President of the United States. All Ivy had accomplished in her assassination attempt was to make the situation worse.

Ivy was a problem also. She was gonna keep right on trying to kill the Táng zǒngtǒng. The reasons were complicated. Ivy was a member of a competing tong. Her father was high up in that tong. Ivy felt an familial obligation to kill the Tong Boss, and now she wanted revenge for the attempted rapes as well.

Since he was with Ivy, and had helped her, he would be considered to be her hatchet-man. The Tong were gonna kill both of them. Choices were limited. They could leave, disappear, they could join the Tong war and fight to survive, or someone could broker a truce between the Tongs, a long shot. Mike was pretty sure Ivy would not go anywhere and hell, he had already killed almost a dozen of those slant-eyed goons, how many more could there be? In the meantime, Mike decided that he wasn't completely sure what Ivy's game was. He was gonna have to keep an eye on her. He was missing something important.

It was dark, in the room, too dark to see but Mike felt Ivy's hand on him. She found his arm and pulled him over onto the bed. In the darkness she stripped off his clothes and set the 45 on the bedside table where he could find it in a hurry, the heavy metal clunking against the wood top. He was half asleep.

She was naked and she climbed on top of him, finding his mouth with hers. She took it slow this time, savoring rather than bolting. Darkness and only the wet of her lips on him... banking up the coals of desire. They had all the time in the world.

She was kissing him and moving slowly on top of him, in the timeless rhythm of waves on a beach, back and forth. Waves and women, thought Mike, still half dozing.

Her reaching hand found his cock, warm and strong and insistent, pulling at him, pulling him from his dreams. Rising desire took hold and Mike rolled her over onto her back, her legs spreading eagerly to surround him, heels pulling him close. Wanting him. He could smell her sex, a musky, clean smell that inflamed him, infecting him with lust for her. She was a heifer braced for her bull, ready to take him inside her engorged and sodden womanhood, primed by hormones to breed, to procreate, to take from him what she wanted, and he kissed her hungrily, holding her.

At some point Mike slipped inside her, his intrusion into the wetness and volcanic heat of her just a progression of the upward spiral of their lovemaking. Her mouth was determinedly on his, her tongue twisting against his, in a fight to gain intimacy, to be closer than close. He felt her hands find his arms, arms that were taking his weight, not to crush her underneath his body. She held him, heels urging her bull onward, building to their mutual goal.

Her small mewing sounds incited Mike. She was almost too wet, there was no friction to propel Mike to where he wanted desperately to go. They were endlessly moving together, waves pounding, beach shuddering under the onslaught. Her small breasts were ripe tropical fruit that he held in his hands, her breath hot trade-wind on his face, her wirery cunt hair like steel wool against him. That was what did it in the end, her distinctly Asian cuntal hair, rasping against his manhood as he pumped in and out of her, tangled and dripping with their combined juices, and he stopped moving, holding motionless to feel his semen shooting up into her belly, cock jerking and spurting eagerly, like a young man with his first love.

They lay there awhile, not moving. Their breathing gradually slowed down to normal.

"Think of your naughtiest fantasies," she murmured. "What would you do if you could do anything with me right now?" But she was tired from the day and she fell asleep still waiting for Mike to answer.

"I'd keep you." Mike said to the night, and didn't sleep for a long time.

A loud and authoritative knock at the front door brought Mike in from the kitchen where he was frying eggs and bacon in the bacon's grease.

Four men were standing at the door. They were dressed alike in starched white shirts and a preference for school ties. Shiny patent leather shoes. FBI. The smell of Old Spice. They pushed into the room without asking.

"Is your name Mike Hammer?"

Mike just looked at the speaker with disgust, making no move to answer, still holding the fry pan in front of him with his left hand.

"Do you know a Lin Fat and a Mai Lee Fat, know as Ivy?"

"Whats it to you?" Mike said.

"You better start co-operating," said one of the government heavies, moving closer in a menacing manner. "Lin Fat and his daughter are known communists and you have been seen in their company."

Mike grunted. "Get the fuck out of my home."

"You don't seem to be taking this seriously." The FBI that appeared to be the leader spoke quietly. Mike turned on him, lowering the fry pan, his 45 showing openly in his right hand, aimed at the agent's ample gut.

"I asked you nice to leave," Mike said grimly, "Now I'm telling you to get lost."

The government men shuffled nervously amongst themselves before edging backward towards the door.

"You cant point a gun at a FBI agent."

"I am ain't I."

"We'll be back. You'll get yours."

Mike didn't bother to reply, just kicked the door shut behind them. Ivy came out from the bedroom looking both gorgeous and calm in a print dress. Only her blackened eye and bruised cheek hinted at last night's frivolities.

"Friends of yours, Mike?"

"Just some of McCarthy's cockroaches, looking under rocks for Communists. Seems like they figured out your father was in the Red Army about a hundred years ago. You know Ivy, it almost seems like someone is setting the dogs on us... someone with some pull. Someone who don't like us."

Ivy just looked at him.

"I have to stop in at the office," Mike said, throwing on a jacket and bending down to pull on his loafers. "Don't answer the door or the telephone while I'm gone. There's a 38 under the bedroom chair."

Mike shut the door firmly behind him and headed over to the garage where he kept his car, a black 1954 Corvette. He fired it up and drove around the block, parking just around the corner from his apartment, out of sight.

Ten minutes later Ivy left the building, dressed in that same dress and a tweed overcoat and white gloves. She jumped in a cab out on the street. Mike pulled out onto the road to follow discretely in the Corvette, as far back as he could manage without losing sight of her. They continued southward, separately but together, into the suburbs.

Ivy turned down a shady street and pulled up to a middle-class house with a tidy yard. She got out of the taxi and went up to the front door, reaching for a buzzer. After a short wait an older Asian woman with a small child opened the door. The child, a girl, rushed out to embrace Ivy. The three of them disappeared inside and the door closed behind them.

Mike drove thoughtfully back to the City. He parked outside the office and wandered in, not in a hurry. Inside the door there waited a posse of well dressed gentlemen with school ties and suspicious bulges under their arms. Eight men this time. Same smell of Old Spice.

"Your going with us, Mike. No shenanigans this time."

The FBI escorted Mike roughly from his office, relieving him of the 45 as they went. They seemed humorless and uncommunicative as they shoved him in a car and drove him to the Police Station, not FBI headquarters, just the Police Station.

In a borrowed office there they sat a handcuffed Mike down in a chair and surrounded him menacingly.

"Who do you think you are pulling a gun on us? You are done. You'll never work in this town again tough guy."

Mike reached carefully into his jacket pocket and extracted a leather ID holder with two fingers. He passed it to the ugliest looking of the FBI agents, where it was examined closely, followed by a great snort of disgust.

"Where did you get this?" The ugly one said, passing the FBI license around to be inspected by the other clowns. They didn't look any more pleased that Ugly did. "From a box of Cracker Jacks?"

Mike grinned. "Made me an official FBI agent last year boys. Maybe you didn't get the memo?"

He held out his hand for the ID holder. Ugly angrily tossed it on the floor at Mikes feet.

"Eat shit, Dirtball." Ugly was rapidly using up his entire repertoire of insults. The FBI left the room loudly complaining amongst themselves, dogs deprived of their rabbit, and they left Mike sitting there, just to express their general resentment. They took his 45 with them. Eventually a cop came in and freed him from the cuffs. No one Mike knew. He was gonna miss that gun.

Mike walked the 5 blocks to the office to pick up his car. It gave him time to think things over. How somebody was pulling down the heat on him... and he was pretty sure who that someone was. How it would never let up. He jumped in the Corvette and drove home, over the bay bridge.

Ivy was home when he walked in. She was doing sitting on the couch cleaning the 38. She looked up inquiringly.

"We're going to war." Mike said.