The five Wongs let loose with a barrage of bye-byes as they left the room. Wong Five pulled the door shut behind him.

Tommy thought, I've got to speak to Wong One about the accommodations.

Wong One wasn't one of the five Wongs with whom Tommy shared the room. Wong One was the landlord: older, wiser, and more sophisticated than Wongs Two through Six. Wong One spoke English, wore a threadbare suit thirty years out of style, and carried a cane with a brass dragon head. Tommy had met him on Columbus Avenue just after midnight, over the burning corpse of Rosinante, Tommy's 74 Volvo sedan.

"I killed her," Tommy said, watching black smoke roll out from under the hood.

"Too bad," Wong One said sympathetically, before continuing on his way.

"Excuse me," Tommy called after Wong. Tommy had just arrived from Indiana and had never been to a large city, so he did not recognize that Wong One had already stepped over the accepted metropolitan limit of involvement with a stranger.

Wong turned and leaned on his dragon-headed cane.

"Excuse me," Tommy repeated, "but I'm new in town — would you know where I can find a place to stay around here?"

Wong raised an eyebrow. "You have money?"

"A little."

Wong looked at Tommy, standing there next to his burning car with a suitcase and a typewriter case. He looked at Tommy's open, hopeful smile, his thin face and mop of dark hair, and the English word «victim» rose in his mind in twenty-point type — part of an item on page 3 of The Chronicle: "Victim Found in Tenderloin, Beaten to Death With Typewriter." Wong sighed heavily. He liked reading The Chronicle each day, and he didn't want to skip page 3 until the tragedy had passed.