Chasing the Dragon (11 page)

Ying hadn’t heard the term in a long time, but he knew what it meant. It was from the old days before the computer, when you ran a make on somebody and stumbled into an undercover investigation. You’d be investigating something—drug activity, maybe, a house with ammunition, odd comings and goings—and then suddenly you’d get a desist order. Such orders, the paper used to come inside a clear sheet of plastic. A vinyl sheet.

“That’s official?” said Ying.

“Officially, you and I, we never spoke.”

The Mancuso brothers were dead now, both of them, and everyone knew. The news of the brothers’ deaths lay strewn on coffee tables and front porches. It was in the air at Cavelli’s. In the cigar smoke that clouded the back booth of Il Fior d’Italia, under the gold record of Tony Bennett. The cops had let Dante loose, and as he walked down Vallejo, still in his father’s pajamas, he could see the evidence of those deaths all about him. In the way the awning kiltered over Rossi’s Grocery, and in the bent heads of the old women inside Mara’s Pastries. In the eyes of the passersby. In the drooping clothes of the old Chinese man and in the fat ass of the tourist clutching to her chest a purse as big as Texas.

There were ghosts everywhere, Nanna Pellicano had said. The land of the living and the land of the dead, they overlapped.

Later that day Dante had an appointment with the Wus, and he needed to change. The cops meantime had made a mess of his father’s house. They’d pulled things out of drawers and left the drawers hanging out of the bureaus, extending like tongues in some kind of cartoon show. They’d piled his mother’s and father’s clothes onto the furniture, and they’d opened the refrigerator, and rolled back the carpets, and torn down the drapes. They’d taken his Glock into evidence, his .40 caliber, and most of his clothes, hauling them down to the lab, looking for fibers, for samples. They’d left him little to wear. They’d left his father’s clothes, though, so Dante began looking through them.

His father had been a flashy dresser. Chintz Polo shirts. Baggy pants. Double-breasted jackets of raw silk. Shoes of calves’ leather with toes that came to a point.

He dressed himself and left. Off to his appointment.

When Dante was growing up it seemed Chinatown had a million doors, all forbidden, and those doors opened into a labyrinth of the unknown, visible only in glimpses. Chinese women on balconies. Girls who turned away when you looked. Men gathered in circles in the dark end of the alley.

Child eaters. Kidnappers. Traders in severed testicles and loose eyeballs.

Now he made his way to the Wu Benevolent Society. It was an old building faced with stucco and balustraded in the Chinese style. It had been allowed to decay, but the art deco lamps still hung over the outdoor balconies. On the windows above street level you could see the gold-lacquered names of Wus numerous associates, but on the street level the building was a Chinatown bazaar: stores full of statuettes and paper fans and cheap jade.

Dante headed to the back of the bazaar, as he had been instructed, to a small office where a young Chinese woman in a polka-dot dress sat behind a travel desk stacked with invoices. Though she was younger than himself, when she looked at him it was the same look he remembered from when he was a boy—as if he had crossed some line into a place he didn’t belong.

“I’m looking for Mason Wu.”

She shook her head. “He doesn’t have an office in this building.”

“I was told I could make arrangements here.”

She regarded him blankly from the other side of the desk. Her features were cold and beautiful, and she wore a white flower in her hair.

“My name’s Dante Mancuso,” he said, and handed her his card. “I’m looking for Mason Wu.”

The woman pushed through the door behind her and left Dante alone. Behind him the bazaar was in full swing. He could hear the cacophony of the market.

Buy a fish from a Chinaman and your dick will fall off.

People bought the fish anyway. They slept with Chinese whores. They used the laborers in their truck farms and in their restaurants. And when the Chinese money came from Hong Kong, they sold them their houses and moved down to Burlingame.

The woman in the polka-dot dress returned, head up; she carried herself with a marvelous disdain, avoiding eye contact. At the same time it was clear there was very little she missed. She hand him back his card, flip side up; there was an address handwritten on the back.

Step through a door in Chinatown, enter the labyrinth, and you could end up anywhere.

Dante took a taxi to the address on the card. It was across town in Presidio Heights, but he was in the labyrinth all the same. He paid the driver and walked up the manicured walk and the man who opened the door was Mason Wu himself. He wore wire-rimmed glasses, Dockers, and a denim shirt rolled up at the sleeves. He was maybe thirty-five years old and had the healthy, recently scrubbed look of a software engineer, but around his neck hung a gold chain that did not quite fit the look.

“It is good to meet with you, Mr. Mancuso.”

“The pleasure is mine.”

“Given recent events, this must be a hard time for you to be discussing business.”

“Very hard.”

“Yet you seek us out.”

“Sometimes, you must seize the opportunity.”

It was true. By all rights he should have been in mourning, adhering to the formalities of grief. Still, such callousness played to his advantage. It would make Wu wonder—like others wondered, no doubt—if he had in truth killed his uncle, or at least arranged to have it done. The fact that he had been released by the police suggested either he was clever enough to have had done it right, leaving no trace, or else he had connections inside the force.

“How is it that the Wu family can help you?”

“I believe I’m the one who can help you.”

The man smiled and you could see the arrogance. It was something you didn’t see in the old-timers so much, but it was there in the new generation—the dawning suspicion that they were superior to the so-called natives and would soon own it all.

“I understand your source from Thailand, it’s not quite what it was.”

“Source?” asked Mason Wu.

“My expertise is bringing in things from around the world. Finding the best, the highest qualities. All types of merchandise. I believe you understand what I mean. And my family, and your family, there is an existing relationship.”

The exact nature of that relationship, Dante didn’t know. He did know the warehouse had started handling shipments from China about ten years ago—clothing exports, toys, soccer balls—all sent on the older barges that didn’t require the crane equipment they used over in Oakland: a deal that had been arranged back when Mayor Rossi was scraping to keep the waterfront alive. How closely this was tied to the Wus, and how nefarious those ties might be beneath the surface, Dante had no idea. Either way, Mason Wu himself said nothing, and Dante read this for what it was: a businessman’s precaution. Because if Dante was wearing a wire—if he was not what he pretended to be—then Wu was better off saying as little as possible.

“Let me be blunt. I know currently you’re getting underpriced by quality product out of Colombia and Mexico. And we both know there are poppy fields here in California now, in the Sierra Nevadas. The Latin cartels are moving their product closer to the market—and you can’t compete. Not in quality. Not in price.”

Dante saw the quiver in the man’s cheek, and he knew he had touched something. According to what Anita Blonde had told him, Love Wu’s old-line family lieutenants were getting pushed out of the drug market, and young Mason Wu was ambitious. In the Wu hierarchy, he was a midlevel guy who worked a step or two above the street with a character named Charles Yi. Mason provided the capital and Yi the muscle.

Rumor had it that Love Wu wanted to be rid of his ambitious young nephew. Meanwhile, the company’s plan was to rake in Yi and Mason and Fakir all at once, then offer immunity if they’d roll over on the higher-ups, on Love Wu himself. Maybe it would work, Dante didn’t know. Part of him still thought this whole thing was going too easily, too smoothly.

“I must consult with my great-uncle.”

Dante handed him a piece of paper. On it was a layout of the Mancuso warehouse. They went over the details.

“You come by boat,” said Dante. “And you leave the same way. This first transfer, if it goes smoothly, will be just the beginning.”

“When?”

“In three days, a week,” said Dante. “Give me your cell number, and I’ll let you know when it’s time.”

Then the deal was set. And Dante stepped outside again, back into the labyrinth.

Gary Mancuso was nervous as hell, jittery by nature, and it didn’t help things when he pulled up and saw Detective Ying on the sidewalk in front of his house. He had just gotten home from his father’s service, and there was the detective waiting on the curb. It gave him a start, seeing the man; it made him angry and fearful at the same time. People were on their way, friends and relatives and well-wishers, to give their condolences to himself and his mother—who had just been released from the hospital yesterday. He didn’t like the cop hovering out on the sidewalk.

Gary had his oldest son with him in the car. “Go inside,” he told the boy. “Tell your mother I’ll be along in a minute.”

Then he walked over to Ying.

“I’m sorry,” Ying said. “Just a few questions . . .”

“You picked a swell time.”

“I understand. But it’s important we get all the information as soon as we can after the incident. Time is of the essence in a case like this.”

“I have people arriving.”

“You told Detective Roma you would come down yesterday,” said Ying. “And when I called . . .”

“Yesterday I was talking to morticians all day.”

“Just a few questions . . .”

Gary wanted to tell the cop to fuck off, to get the hell away from his house, but he held his tongue. There were people pulling up now, fresh from the funeral. Gary did not want to cause a scene or make the cop think he had something to hide.

“Let’s step over here,” said Ying. “It will give us more privacy.”

It was thoughtful for the cop to suggest, but for some reason it just made Gary resent Ying all the more. Even so, he obliged. He followed the cop around the corner, and they stood in the driveway that serviced the apartments behind his house.

“Before your father died, how were things at the warehouse?”

“What do you mean?”

“Businesswise?”

“Not so good, not so bad.”

“No money problems?”

“What are you getting at?”

“Any financial problems? Your dad owe anyone money?”

“No.”

“How about the other way around?”

“You know, I can’t help but resent this.”

“I understand. But I’m sure you want to catch your father’s murderer. I’m sure you want to help.”

“Like I said, he didn’t owe anyone any money. And no one owed him.”

“What did your father keep in the room where he was killed?”

“Some old files, but family stuff mostly. Pictures. Mementos. Nothing anybody would want.”

“It was ransacked. Somebody tore it apart.”

“I know,” said Gary. “But I don’t know what they could have been looking for.”

“You were at the warehouse the afternoon he was killed.”

“I was working, yes.”

“All day?”

“I went out for lunch.”

“What time did you get back?”

Gary could see where the cop was going, and he didn’t like it.

“About one thirty.”

“Did anyone see you come back?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know?”

“I didn’t make a fuss, if that’s what you mean. I had some account files to work on.”

“At the hospital, you told Detective Roma you didn’t get home till seven. You were here the whole time?”

Gary swallowed uncomfortably. He didn’t like this. “Yes,” he said. “That’s right.”

Ying paused. Gary feared he was going to make him go through it all again, but all the sudden the cop left off this line of pursuit.

“Your father wasn’t feuding with anyone?”

“No.”

“No arguments? No reason for anyone you know to do something like this?”

Gary shook his head. His insides were shaking, too, but he did his best to hold himself together.

“Is there anything else you want to tell me?”

The cop looked him in the eye. Gary looked back.

“No.”

“All right,” said Ying. Then he shook Gary’s hand and told him to give him a call if he thought of anything.

“I will.”

The sudden change made Gary more nervous, and he knew in his gut this wasn’t going to hold. But he didn’t know what else he could do. He walked back up to the house. Inside, he saw his secretary, Anna Jones. Anna knew more than he would like. She had worked with the business for a half dozen years, an ample woman who always dressed in black and wore loose clothes to hide her weight. Anna was by a nature a friendly person and had done him a favor or two in the past, but she was not the kind who would lie to the police. He greeted her, and she gave him a big-breasted hug but her eyes flitted from his and she didn’t stay long. She gave her condolences to his mother, then she left. He felt the fear in his throat. He’d made a mistake. The cops would talk to her eventually, they would be all over the warehouse, and his story wouldn’t hold.

Gary Mancuso was an only son, adopted out of an orphanage in Rome by Salvatore and Regina. Gary knew the story: how his parents had made the trip to Italy because they’d wanted an Italian child. It was a story he’d heard over and over. How they’d bundled him up and taken him on the plane, across that gray ocean, then showed him off the next Sunday to the shopkeepers along Columbus Avenue. Himself, he remembered nothing of Italy. He had spent his whole life in North Beach, played in the streets, gone to the church, hung close by his father and mother. When he was a young man and just about everyone his age had left The Beach—down the peninsula, across the bay, any place to get away from the windy streets and cramped apartments—Gary had stayed. He had gone into the family business. Despite all this he was still an outsider, the adopted kid whose claim to the neighborhood was secondhand. He had one of the nicest spots in The Beach now, on top of Telegraph, with a view all around and Italian furniture, everything you could want. But people still talked. He hadn’t worked for it, they said. He was pampered. And who knew what else.