Chasing the Dragon (13 page)

“Are you going to have to run off to a murder scene?”

“No.”

“I’m sorry,” she said. “It’s just . . .”

“I know. You don’t have to explain.”

“The kids will be gone for another hour. We still have time.”

He turned and smiled at her. Then he glanced back out the window. It was a quiet street. A man walking his dog. A woman trimming her wisteria on the corner. You could hear the soft woosh of traffic up on Hearn, and some starlings going after one another down in the grass. It was all green and peaceful, the twilight filtering beautifully through the slatted blinds.

Everything was calm. There was nothing to worry about. Nothing at all.

An hour later the kids came home. In the intervening time, Ying and Lei had been intimate, and now the air inside the house had a little bit of a glow. The kids were chattering and full of themselves, and there was a certain magic in the mere sound of their voices.

“Did you work today?” his girl asked.

“For a little while.”

“Did you kill anyone?” asked his son.

It was the family joke. His son, who had just turned seven, asked it every time Ying came home from work lately, and they all laughed, even though it was not so funny as it had been.

“No,” said Ying. “Not today.”

He went back to the window. It was dark outside now, but the street was serene and beautiful.
I’ll stay away from Miss Lin
, Ying decided.
There is no reason to stir things up. No reason to ruin our beautiful life
.

Eearlier that same evening, before leaving his uncle’s wake, Dante had lingered a moment on his cousin’s balcony. Inside, he had embraced the old ones and smelled the wine on their breaths, and there was something comforting in all this, he had to admit, in the pressing of the flesh, in the raising of the glass, in the long liquid glances and sudden laughter—but there was also a question left unasked in those eyes, a suspicion. He had seen it in Aunt Regina, up close, even as she embraced him, and in the others as well. It was natural enough given the circumstances, but Dante could not help wanting to put it to rest. Meanwhile, the sun was down and he could see the hard glitter of North Beach below, and for an instant he felt the craving that would overcome him in New Orleans.

Now he heard a footstep on the balcony, a woman’s step, and then Marilyn Visconti leaned over the railing beside him.

“So this is not the best homecoming for you.”

“It could be better.”

The wind was blowing hard, and an offshore fog had begun to form, billowing against the black sky.

“Gary has a nice place here,” she said.

“Yes.”

It was idle talk, but he wondered about the opulence. A three-story house, balconies on every side. Slate on the outside and imported marble in the foyer, The warehouse was a decent business, but neither his father nor Uncle Salvatore had lived like this.

“Your uncle,” she said. “Do the police have any idea what happened, I mean—who was responsible?”

“I don’t know what the police are thinking.”

“I’m sorry. I thought, someone you know in the department, maybe, you know, cop talk—that you might have some kind of knowledge.”

“They don’t confide in me.”

“No, I guess not.”

She was being polite, he supposed, acting as if his time with the police had been some sort of cooperative venture, a meeting of the minds, friendly detectives filtering through the clues.

“I’m sorry,” he said.

“About what?”

“The other day, up at your place—I should have kept my hands to myself.”

“You had just buried your father,” she said, as if this somehow explained things. Maybe it did. Off to the east, the sky had gotten yet blacker, and from offshore the fog was moving quickly. The wind was cold. Marilyn was dressed in her funeral blacks, but her clothes were thin, and she shivered. “Those years—it wasn’t like I stopped thinking of you. There are things I didn’t get to explain.”

“Have you set a date?”

“For what?”

“The wedding.”

She didn’t answer. Dante turned and leaned with his back to the railing. He was surprised to see that the fog was up around Coit Tower now, and in a little while it would be here, and the view would disappear. “You remember,” she said. “That day we spent out on the water.”

Her smile was self-deprecatory, embarrassed. She shivered again, and he took a step closer.

“I remember,” he said. “I’ll take you out there again. If you want to go.”

Then Gary blundered onto the balcony, just like the old days, standing there with that lost-kid look on his face, lips in a twist, eyes watering.

“What are you two doing?” he said. “It’s cold out here.”

Neither of them moved. Then Mora appeared on the balcony, a piece of melon in one hand, a glass of wine in the other.

“Excuse me,” said Dante.

He left. On the street, Coit Tower had all but vanished. The fog had descended and North Beach was covered in a black mist.

Later that evening, Dante headed down to the Naked Moon. Wiesinski had phoned again, wanting to meet him there: for old time’s sake, he said, some commiseration and troublemaking. And Dante had agreed to come.

In its own kind of way, the Naked Moon was a family place. The owner, Jojo LoCoco, worked behind the bar. Jojo’s father had worked it before him, and his father’s father before that, back when the navy still let its boys loose in The Beach, and Broadway Avenue was all about big tits and Mama Mia’s spaghetti and finding someone to suck your cock. But things were different now—what with home video and pay-for-view—and it wasn’t quite as easy to make your money off an old-fashioned grind show. Jojo sat behind the counter smoking a cigar, and he greeted Dante in the same way he had seven years ago, as if he hadn’t been gone a day.

“If it isn’t the Pelican,” he said. “Sit down, my friend, water your beak.”

Dante ordered a beer with a chaser and put some money on the counter. Jojo’s eyes grew rheumy and sad.

“Sorry about your dad.”

“Thanks.”

“Sorry about your uncle, too.”

“I appreciate it, Jojo.”

“It just don’t make any sense.”

“No.”

“You need something, let me know. One of the girls. Between shows. A blow job.”

“I’m waiting on somebody. But I need anything, I’ll let you know.”

Dante took his beer and sat in the back to wait for Wiesinski. In a little while the show started. First it was a blonde girl that came out, then a black, and then a Vietnamese.

This was a midweek show, and the routines had a certain clumsiness, but then that was always the case. The blonde girl did “Yankee Doodle Dandy,” and the black one danced to “Dixie,” and the Vietnamese girl did some kind of sayonara-sounding good-bye song, with a voice-over à la Tokyo Rose. Her movements were jerky and odd. She was very young, but Dante felt compelled to watch her as she took off her kimono then jutted about the stage, with black pasties covering her tiny breasts and a bird of paradise perched in her hair. She tried to make her moves graceful—rising to her tiptoes, then a series of half-rendered pliés—but the effort only made her seem more ungainly, her arms and feet hurly-burly over the floor. Her eyes were doll-like, glassy and black.

She was about halfway through this routine when Wiesinski tapped him on the shoulder. “Ah, my old friend,” he said. “So we meet again.”

“It appears so.”

“Why are you sitting so far back?”

Dante shrugged. “I like the dark.”

“I can understand that, seeing without being seen. Certainly,” he said, “not my way, of course, but hell . . .”

Wiesinski had grown up in the Excelsior district, out near the Alemany projects, but he didn’t carry that with him. When he was with the SFPD, he’d been known for his suits. Well tailored, very sharp. At times Wiesinski looked more like a well-heeled mark than a cop, but apparently it served him well, even after most everyone on the beat knew his game. He’d worked vice all over the city—Polk Gulch, Lower Market, the Barbary Coast—and you couldn’t walk too many places without people kissing his shoes.

As a vice cop, he’d played out in the open like he said, not undercover. But he’d had his pigeons like anyone else. Eyes in the dark.

“Long time,” said Dante. “Who’d you say you were working for these days?”

Wiesinski hummed a minute. “Security work. Downtown. That kind of thing.”

“So you’re a night watchman.”

It was a calculated remark. Wiesinski laughed. “That’s me, watching the night,” but then he bit, like Dante guessed he would bite, not wanting to be played low. “There’s some intrigue. Corporate espionage, call it what you will, it’s all about money. I go abroad sometimes. Three, four months at a time. But hell. You tell me, my friend, how are
you
doing? First your dad, and now . . .”

Wiesinski shook his head. There was something like tears welling up in his eyes. Crocodile tears, maybe, it was hard to judge. Even the people he put away, Dante remembered, they would joke with Wiesinski on the way to the tombs. He was a dapper guy, the kind of guy you liked right away—even if you did not quite trust him. The truth was he’d been one of the few people on the force to hang with him back when the Strehli business was coming down.

“They got any suspects?”

“Aside from me?”

Wiesinski laughed. “Yeah, well, you can’t blame ’em. You dagos. One killing the next.”

“You’re a dago.”

“Only half, my friend. Only fucking half.”

On the stage, the Vietnamese girl had finished the solo part of her act. The other two returned—the blonde and the black girl—and it was the three of them up there all at once now. Nothing sophisticated, just straight-up grind.

“You going to stick around town?”

“I’m thinking about it,” Dante said, “exploring possibilities.”

“You know I never liked how the SFPD treated you. You had a career here.”

“Well, I made a mistake.”

“Butted the wrong heads. That Strehli business.” Wiesinski shook his head, but his face had gone flush. Then he leaned in. “So what’s it you’re into now?”

“Export business,” said Dante.

“Get to use any of your old skills?”

“Not much.”

The man was peering at him. Dante wasn’t sure what to think. There were a hundred ways you could read Wiesinski. It could be he suspected that the export business was some kind of cover, that there was something to tap into there, and he wanted a piece. But it could be something else, too. Wiesinski, with his job, his connections . . .

“Tell me something. This cop investigating your uncle’s murder . . .”

“Ying.”

“He used to be with SI. Now he’s back with Homicide. Brass doesn’t like that kind of thing—downward movement.”

Dante wondered how Wiesinski knew so much. Apparently he was still keeping tabs on things, staying in touch. A finger in the pie.

“Guess he didn’t have the taste for it.”

“Homicide dicks—most of what they deal with is arbitrary. Impulse, greed—jacked-up hormones, skewed biochemistry.

“But SI—it’s a different thing. You look for the calculated stuff. The mind behind the mind. Some people—they look at that, they see a consciousness behind it all. The kind of mind that works in SI thinks the world’s got an explanation, just study the book long enough and you’ll understand. You get this bug in you, it’s hard to go back to Homicide.

“But the truth is, evil, it’s both things. It’s the calculated
and
it’s the arbitrary—the careful plan juiced up with sudden improvisation. That’s the genius of evil. Why you can never bring it under control.”

He was a bit drunk, and Dante remembered this side of him, the philosopher gone askew. It was how he’d gotten his nickname, rants like this. Wiesinski got around. He hung in the gutter, but he hung with the elites, too, the mayor and the businessmen. Dante thought again how he’d run into him once down in New Orleans, at Mardi Gras, not long after he’d left the SFPD. A few days later, he’d been approached by the company—and he’d always wondered if that was happenstance. Ultimately, he dismissed it. You could drive yourself mad floundering over coincidence. Especially in New Orleans.

The Big Why raised his glass. “To genius. The inscrutable text, the unknowable secret. May it keep us long employed.”

Wiesinski was on his feet now. On stage, the grind act was over. Wiesinski raised a finger—every bit the gentleman. “Hey, sweetie, a word, please, a word.” His voice was the perfect pitch, loud but not too loud, friendly, like that of some uncle who’d recognized you on the street. The girl turned.

Wiesinski went over and spoke to the girl. Then he came back.

“The three of them are coming off shift here. I invited them for a drink. Soon as they get some clothes on.”

“They’re never off shift. Those drinks are going to cost.”

“Of course. We’ll have a couple. Let Jojo make his money.”

“I was getting ready to go.”

“We’ll take them to the Romolo Hotel. Get twin beds. You screw one, I screw the other. Treat the girls to a night of luxury. Hell, I’ll pay. I’ll pay for it all.”

“There’s three girls.”

“The third can watch.”

Dante hesitated. “Who you working for downtown?”

“Come on, which girl you want?”

Dante leaned in now. “Caselli didn’t kill Strehli, you know that?”

“This is out of the blue, my friend. Who cares about Caselli? He signed a confession, the way I remember.”

“But he didn’t do it. It was someone else—and everyone knew. But they didn’t want to investigate. Why?”

Wiesinski shrugged. “Why do you think, my friend? Because the world is a web of sin, and the truth wasn’t in their interest. Once you’re in the web, you’re in, and there’s no getting out. Survive anyway you can. But you know this, my friend. Come spend some time with the girls.”

“I’ve got someplace to be.”

“No, you don’t. We’ll go to the Romolo. We can get some treats on the way?”

“Treats?”

“Something recreational, you know. Whatever you want.”

There was a glimmer in Wiesinski’s eyes, and Dante realized what he was saying. Wiesinski would know every street vendor between here and South City. The Vietnamese girl was headed their way now, dressed in jeans and a denim shirt. She couldn’t have been more than sixteen.