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and gin joints and St. Mary’s after dark. A kind of a home, one for the homeless, one for the outcasts. Nowhere else to go.
    White men locked the gate, then bought the opium, bought the girls, bought the silks and the food and the jade, white men kept coming back for more. The Chinese shrugged. And made exclusion pay. You want exotic, Mister, you can have it, but you mind your city and we’ll mind ours. It’s where you locked us up, remember?
    Smoke from her cigarette drifted back down Clay, toward the people already lining up three bodies thick on Grant. She watched it swirl, wondering if it would form a tiger or a lion. Chinatown was a city of outcasts. They’d made the most of it.
    So had she.
    The fog was creeping down from the Mark Hopkins and the Fairmont and the exclusive set on Nob Hill. It flowed sinuously over Stockton and Clay, past the GOLDEN STAR RADIO SIGN, drowning out the yellow neon in a sea of thick white haze, heading for the piers. A foghorn belched, the low hum filling one of the few silences in the heart of Chinatown. Real fog was an event, not just a shapeless cloud of moisture. As alive as the dragons of Chinatown and the ghosts of gold rush San Francisco.
    One o’clock. Parade would start in an hour. No time for a stroll through Ross Alley or down to Manila Restaurant or over to Japantown. Miranda was out of smokable cigarettes, the day old enough already. And the bloody bandage in her bra was making her itch.
    Chen’s left a sour taste in her mouth. She was getting too old. Use what you have, Miranda, use it up. Charlie Burnett on detective work. Her cases were her own, now, not Burnett’s setups or Dianne’s Shriners, wanting a decoration on their arms and a piece of something else after the show.
    The drugstore next to the Republic Hotel was out of Chesterfields. She turned down the druggist’s suggestion of Lucky Strikes, and picked up copies of the Examiner and the Call-Bulletin. The pharmacy didn’t carry the News , and Miranda knew better than to think the Chronicle would run anything.
    Eddie was a-second-to-the-last-page item in the Examiner , placed a couple of pages up from that in the Call-Bulletin. There was a quote from Phil about Eddie’s record, and assurances by a mouthpiece for the Bay Region Committee in charge of the Chinese Civilian Benefit Campaign, and still more from someone on the Chamber of Commerce. The conclusion was obvious: Eddie was a criminal, and no one really gave a fuck about who murdered him, as long as it wouldn’t spill over into Rice Bowl festivities and freeze out-of-town pocketbooks. Scratch it over, boys. Chalk it up to Nanking.
    Back to the Monadnock Building, a few paces ahead of the fog. Miranda enjoyed the strain on her calves, the pain immediate, simple. Market Street was already loading up, ready to get loaded, Sunday night party in Chinatown. Gaiety that much more desperate since Monday morning was at the other end.
    She walked into the lobby, the girl at the newsstand counter holding her carefully curled, not-so-carefully bleached head in her hand, bored and eyeballing a Latin-lover type with wide shoulders waiting for the elevator.
    “Got any Chesterfields, Gladdy?”
    The crate operator whisked up Cesar Romero, and Gladys handed Miranda three packs, with a sigh.
    “Been savin’ ’em for you. I don’t know why everyone wants a Chesterfield, suddenly.”
    “Haven’t you heard? They satisfy.”
    Gladys snorted. “Who’re they kiddin’? Now, him”—she jutted a thumb out to where a thin bald man with an umbrella had replaced the Latin lover in line—“he was what I call satisfaction.”
    Miranda quickly lit up a stick. “You got the latest News ?”
    Eddie had moved up in the world. The News ranked him on page two, and had the guts to point out the obvious: he was Japanese and murdered right before the Rice Bowl Party. She folded the paper and tucked it under her arm. The article meant she could expect a call from Rick.
    “Say,