Whether it was because of bad luck or naiveté, he had arranged his trip through a crafty travel agency sponsored by the Mongolian mafia. Mike unwittingly ended up in a prison work camp operated by the mafia on the outskirts of Chicago. He’d slaved in Illinois’s legalized opium fields for two years before I’d rescued him while taking a tour of the camp, a spontaneous act of mercy on my part.
After his escape, Mike could have returned to the Shaolin temple, but he’d felt that his imprisonment was such a bad omen that he had brought dishonor to his fellow monks. So he stayed with me, employing his fighting skills on my behalf, teaching me the kung fu style of martial arts. I’d been studying tae kwon do, the Korean style, since I was a kid.
So while Mike was a fighter, he still had the heart of a monk and often spat out cryptic sayings and insightful diatribes that had vaguely ominous, spiritual overtones.
“I had a dream,” he said darkly.
I swallowed. “Oh?”
“While you slept with that thing, I dreamed your fate.”
“Look, Mike, I didn’t ask you to do that, and he is not a thing. Bogie is a…a…” My voice trailed away. I rubbed my forehead. I didn’t even know what to call him. Truth was, I should be making love with a real man. Maybe Lola was right. I heaved a sigh. “So what happened in the dream?”
“A blue dragon…she rose out of water and…”
“Yeah?” I prodded when he frowned down at the astrology chart. “So?”
“You are so impatient, Baker!” he snapped.
I was stunned into silence. I’d never heard Mike lose his temper before. I slowly put my cup down on the table. “I’m sorry.”
He frowned and nodded, not looking at me. “Blue dragon must fight two-headed eagle.”
I waited, afraid to interrupt.
“Something has happened, Baker. A storm gathers. Our time together may be at an end.”
He looked at me as if for the last time. I shivered with foreboding. A sudden wind blew up, rare in the north side of the city. The skies opened and warm rain descended unannounced. Big, fat dollops hit the roof, the sidewalk, cleansing them, leaving behind a humid, silver scent. Mike and I exchanged looks. He’d once told me blue dragons had power over rain.
Jeez. I was getting downright superstitious myself. I took my coffee cup and left without saying another word. I didn’t need to. Superstition aside, I had a funny feeling the Chinese gods were about to fling some ox pies our way.
Chapter 5
To Lola with Love
Irony sucks.
At least it did when I went to see Lola on Howard Street in the Rogers Park neighborhood to make sure she was okay. I arrived thinking I understood the extent of my mother’s shenanigans and left realizing I didn’t know the half of it.
Two blocks east of the public transportation station, Lake Michigan lapped on the sandy shore in the glare of the moonlight. I couldn’t hear the waves, but I remembered them from my childhood—remembered intrepidly diving into water that was cold even in July.
Back then I’d wanted to be a mermaid when I grew up. I used to practice holding my breath under water so that one day I could live in the lake, but I always had to come up for air. That was my first clue that I might be destined for something else.
I was six, and the lake was an oasis from Lola’s parlor, where mobsters of every ethnic origin came to have their fortunes told or, more likely, bets placed. One year later, when Lola went to prison for bookmaking, I was yanked out of there by the Department of Children and Family Services. Since I didn’t even know who my father was, D.C.F.S. plunked me into foster care, if you could call it that, in one of the sprawling suburbs, a concrete oasis known as Schaumburg. I didn’t see the lake again for two years. By the time I returned I didn’t believe in mermaids anymore.
I brushed the memories aside as I exited the superconductor platform onto the grimy street. I turned left and walked one block until I saw the red neon Fortunes Told sign blinking outside Lola’s second-floor window. The T had shorted out so it read Fortunes old. That was for sure.
More childhood memories came flying at me, and not all of them bad—Lola and I holding hands as we walked to the corner ice-cream shop, trying not to step on cracks; laughing together when she tried to curl my hair and it ended up looking like she’d put my finger in an electric socket; lying in my lumpy bed at night, listening to the sounds of traffic and gunfire, so grateful I had my mother to keep me safe.
Even then I must have known it wasn’t going to last. I’d cherished the chaotic and neglectful life I had, not knowing it could be better. And later, when I knew it could have been, I yearned for it still. You never stop missing a mother when she’s gone, even when you can’t stand to be near her.
I picked up my pace. I’d been worried about my mother ever since her visit and Mike’s ominous dream. I felt guilty about blowing her off. Why I worried about a woman who could outsmart the devil himself, I didn’t know. That is, not until I drew close enough and saw that the police had cordoned off the sidewalk in front of her brick apartment building. The cops had used old-fashioned yellow police tape. They didn’t waste decent laser barriers in a neighborhood like this. Not when they’d probably be stolen. There were a couple police aerocars hovering on the street outside.
I ran the last few feet and ducked under the police tape, fully intending to dash up the crumbling concrete steps to the second-floor apartment.
“Hey!” shouted a patrolman from his car. He turned off the engine and the squad car sank a foot to the pavement with a hiss. He climbed out. “You can’t go in there!”
“I’m a relative!” I shouted over my shoulder.
Just then an older cop came out of the door. By the time I met him on the small porch, he had drawn his taser. “Stop right there. Who are you?”
I looked up into his deeply lined face and my mind sizzled with a long-forgotten memory. It came like the flash of a July Fourth sparkler. I recalled the night the police had arrested Lola for bookmaking twenty-one years ago. The officers who handcuffed her had been placing bets in her parlor for years. I hated the hypocrites. For a long time I loathed the sight of a police uniform.
“Who are you?” the big, square-framed cop demanded as he hoisted up his sagging pants.
I no longer felt like explaining. I pulled a trick Mike had taught me.
“Follow the bouncing ball.” I put two fingers like a fake gun to his forehead, arm extended, and threw every ounce of chi I had into his third eye. I don’t mean that literally, of course. In eastern religions, the place in the middle of the forehead is considered a portal to the soul—a third eye. The cop in front of me didn’t know that. Nevertheless, he froze and closed his eyes. I turned and jogged up the stairs three at a time until I reached the apartment.
The first room I saw was the kitchen. An overturned table lay in the middle. There was blood everywhere. There were times when I had been ready to murder Lola with my own bare hands, but I wasn’t prepared for this. I hesitated just long enough for the patrolman to break out of his trance and come barreling up the stairs after me.
“Hold it right there!” he ordered.
Just then a detective stepped in my line of sight.
“It’s okay, Officer. She’s family.”
It was Detective Marco. He guided me in with a soft touch to the elbow. When the older cop left, I stopped and pulled my arm away and glared at Marco. “What are you doing here?”
“I’ll explain later.”
“Is