Chasing the Dragon (8 page)

Ying did not know the old woman’s exact age. Grandmother Ying had been smuggled into the country decades ago, back when the exclusion laws still prohibited Chinese women. Ying’s grandfather had been a successful tradesman, so he’d made arrangements through a Shanghai broker who specialized in young women. She had outlived her husband and a number of her children and several of her grandchildren as well. At some point along the way, Ying was not sure exactly when, she had passed into this blind silence.

Now the old woman got up to make tea. She negotiated the little kitchen without hesitation. This was all part of their ritual, the boiling of the water and the steeping of the tea. Then they would go sit together in the front room, which was really nothing more than a parlor. Grandmother Ying had raised five children in these tiny rooms, though that seemed hardly possible now.

The front room was spare. She was quiet and he was quiet and the only thing in the room was the smell of the orchid in the vase on the rattan table in front of them.

It was beautiful, that orchid. Ying lingered in the silence of the old woman’s house and found it hard to pull himself away. He often came here. They sipped their tea together, and he closed his eyes, dwelling in the old woman’s quietude. He thought about his wife, Lei. Even though she was only just across the bay—and he could be on his way home to her any minute—he closed his eyes and for a moment yearned for her in the way the Chinese bachelors must have yearned for wives of their own, dreaming of the day when they would have enough money to smuggle a woman into the country. Most of them never did.

Then his cell rang. It was Maxine Hong, the desk sergeant at the Night Division.

“Are you in the city?” asked Hong.

Ying said nothing. He could guess what was coming. The Night Division was perpetually shorthanded.

“Where are you?”

The tunnel, Ying wanted to say. I am in the tunnel, in the train, deep under the bay. On my way home. And in another moment the tunnel will emerge into the light and I will step onto the platform and . . .

“I’m here,” he said. “In The Beach.”

“There’s been a homicide up on Union. Toliveri’s on the scene—but Angelo says it’s yours to head up. If you want it.”

Ying got the implication. Ever since he’d left SI the implication was the same. He’d gone soft.

By the time Ying got to the scene, the patrol car had cordoned off the house and the gawkers were starting to gather. The ME was on the steps with the photographer, but Toliveri was holding Forensics out of the house until Ying had a chance to walk the scene.

“We’ve got the wife and the son sequestered in the den.” Toliveri jabbed a thumb over his shoulders. “Do you want to talk to them?”

“Let me take a look around first.”

There were blood smears on the carpet, and Ying followed the tracks though the kitchen and up the stairs. The stains got darker as he went up, and darker still on the hall carpet—until he turned the corner and saw the old man lying on the hardwood, then the prints got muddled with the blood on the floor. Ying glanced at the corpse and could see at once that lividity had set in. Dead maybe six, seven hours. The ME could be more precise. The room itself was a mess, paper scattered all around—as if someone had been searching for something.

“Who reported the murder?” Ying asked

“The victim’s wife.”

Toliveri was in his early fifties. He had grown up in the neighborhood, but he was a second stringer in the department. He was a good detective when he wanted to be, but he had some gripes—the main one being he wanted a promotion before he quit so he could boost his pension status. He was genial enough. Witnesses tended to trust him, at least in the early going. But he had a way of undermining the investigation. Holding back too long, then bulling forward for no apparent reason. There were times, too, when he just didn’t do what you asked.

“These footprints,” said Ying. “They look like a woman’s shoe.”

“The wife, like I said. She’s got blood on her dress as well.”

“You had a chance to talk to her?”

“She says she came home at three o’clock. But she didn’t come up here right away. Took a nap on the couch first. Then she found the body. She’s the one who tracked things up.”

“How about the son?”

“Gary Mancuso. He lives up the street. His mother called him after she found the body.”

Ying felt a spear of panic. Maybe it showed on his face.

“What’s the name again?”

“Mancuso.”

And he had the feeling it was all connected, it was all the same case, just a million different manifestations. A hydra. Cut off the head, and it grew a dozen more.

“Big name in The Beach. Or used to be,” Toliveri said. He gestured toward the corpse. “That was Salvatore. Owns the warehouse down China Basin. His brother Giovanni died a few days back.”

“I’m aware of that.”

“The son, Salvatore’s nephew—he used to be with Homicide. He’s back in town for the old man’s funeral.”

“I know.”

“How do you know? You keeping tabs on the Italians these days?”

Toliveri meant it as funny, but it didn’t come out right. Like there were things Ying couldn’t possibly know. Ying had gotten this kind of treatment before, just as he was sure Toliveri had gotten it when he worked Chinatown. There were things you couldn’t know if you were not of the blood. Things you shouldn’t know. Ying understood the attitude, even shared it to a degree, but the comment still played on his nerves.

“I’m going to go talk to the wife,” he said.

When he went downstairs, though, he found a man in the den with Regina Mancuso and her son. He was the family doctor, and he had Mrs. Mancuso stretched out on the daybed. It was a brightly colored piece of furniture, and there was something incongruous about the woman lying there. She wore expensive clothes but she had a peasant face, and there was that blood on her dress.

“She’s in no condition to talk with you,” said the doctor.

“How did you get in here?” Ying turned to Toliveri. “This place is supposed to be secure.”

Toliveri shrugged. The answer lay in the shrug. Loose discipline. The crew didn’t pay attention to Toliveri, because everyone knew how he was. But Ying knew if there was a breach in evidence, he would get the grief.

“Her heart—she appears to be fibrillating,” the doctor said. “From the shock, possibly. I need to get her to the hospital.”

“I want to talk to her first.”

The doctor shook his head. “You can talk to her later. This is a medical emergency.”

“I’ve already taken her statement,” said Toliveri.

Just then Ying heard the ambulance in the distance, wailing down Columbus. The mother grasped for her son.

“I want the son with her,” the doctor said, “riding in the ambulance. It’s a matter of keeping her calm.”

“I got the broad strokes in the preliminary,” Toliveri said. “We can catch the details later.”

The ambulance was closer now, and the mother moaned again. Given her condition, Ying wondered how much information, if any, Toliveri had gotten. Ying didn’t want to push the old woman over the edge, but the police work so far had not been as tight as it should be, and in cases like this family members were always suspect. He forced himself past the doctor and took Gary Mancuso by the arm.

“I just need a minute.”

“What, what?” said the old woman. She was disoriented and her color was bad. Ying edged the son away.

“Where were you this afternoon?”

The son gave him a vague look, and Ying repeated the question. “Where were you?”

“At the warehouse.”

“Anybody around who can verify that?”

“Huh?”

The paramedics were coming in the door now. There was a rush of activity and Ying used the confusion to push himself into Gary Mancuso’s face. The man was nervous. Ying did not like the curl to his lip, or the way he averted his eyes.

“I said can anybody verify where you were this afternoon?”

“The men on the dock, I guess. I was in and out.”

“You guess?”

“Listen—”

“You work on the dock.”

The guy looked offended. “It’s the family business. I had paperwork this morning, in the office, then I went out to lunch.”

“But you spent some time on the dock, this afternoon.”

“That isn’t what I said.”

“You have a secretary there, in the office?”

“Of course, but . . . I can’t do this now.”

The doctor cut in. “Listen, can’t this wait?”

Ying glanced back. The paramedics had strapped the women into the gurney, but she was looking toward her son, her eyes very wide and full of fear. Ying could see he wasn’t going to get anything else out of Mancuso, not now. He turned to Toliveri. “All right,” he said. “Let’s seal this scene. But do it right this time. And get Forensics in here.”

Outside, Ying watched the old woman and her son and the doctor make their way to the ambulance. He was tempted to send Toliveri along to push things, to get a formal statement from Gary, and maybe something from his mother, if possible, but he needed Toliveri here. So he called Central and told them to get a detective out to the hospital, a woman preferably, maybe Louise Roma. After the ambulance was gone, he lingered on the front porch. He studied the neighboring residences, looking for windows and doors that had a direct sight line into Salvatore Mancuso’s house. There was a place across the street, with the blinds half open, and those curtains fell closed as he watched.

Ying strolled down into the crowd that had gathered on the street. The street crackled with the odd energy it had at times like this, and they gawked at the gangly Chinese detective in his white shirt and thin tie.

“Who lives across the street?”

“The Widow Bolinni,” said one of the old-timers.

The crowd had questions of their own, but Ying paid no attention. He went inside and got Toliveri, then sent him over to talk to the woman while he supervised the scene. It took him a while, but eventually Toliveri came back with the news.

“I got something,” said Toliveri. He looked excited. “The Widow Bollini—she says she saw the deceased’s nephew outside the house around two o’clock.”

“What’s the nephew’s name?”

“Dante. Dante Mancuso. She saw him leaving the house.”

“The ex-cop?”

“Used to work Homicide. He was Angelo’s partner. That was before the Strehli business, if you remember all that.”

“Two o’clock, she said?”

“Yeah. Two o’clock.”

“That puts him here at the time of death.”

“Pretty close.”

“Let’s go talk to him.”

“He lives down on Fresno.”

“I know.”

“Of course,” said Toliveri. “You know everything.”

The man who opened the door on Fresno Street was not soft or pretty. He had hard, angular features. His nose was prominent, his skin dark, his lips thin—with a downward turn, almost sensuous—and altogether he had about him the looks of the old world, Moorish and cruel, but handsome, too. He wore pajamas, expensive pajamas, but he did not seem entirely comfortable in them. If there was one thing that struck Ying about the man it was the nose. An admirable nose—ancient in its profile, big as a peninsula. It made you unlikely to forget his face in the future.

The man’s hair was short-cropped, unlike his father’s, and this accentuated his features. Ying saw the family resemblance. He had stood in this same doorway a couple weeks back talking with the father Giovanni. But Ying was with Toliveri now, and the man in the doorway was Dante Mancuso.

“Hi, Toli,” Mancuso said. His voice carried a note of irony. It was a natural irony directed at the order of things, of which Toliveri was only the most recent manifestation. “You still with Homicide?”

“Sorry to get you up at this hour.” Toliveri shied backward, straightening himself. On the way over, Ying had suggested Toliveri lead the questioning, at least at first. It seemed to make sense. Toliveri and Dante were acquainted; they knew each other from the neighborhood as well as from their time on the force. Already, though, Ying was beginning to think this was a mistake.

“If we could come in for a moment?” Toliveri asked.

“Is this a social call?”

“I wish so. I haven’t seen you for so long.” Toliveri paused, trying to be gracious in his way. “This is Detective Ying. He used to be with Special Investigations.”

“Who’s he with now?”

“Do you mind if we come in?”

Mancuso nodded, but he kept himself wedged in the doorway.

“There was an incident,” Toliveri said. “And we were wondering if you could help us out.”

Instead of revealing the uncle’s death up front, Toliveri was holding back to see how much Dante would reveal on his own. To see if the man would contradict himself or come out with some detail that gave his involvement away. But Dante had been a detective, Ying thought, and would not be so easily taken in. This was obviously a Homicide detail, and there was no way the two of them would be here at this time of night if it didn’t have to do with a murder. Still, Dante seemed to warm to Toliveri, though perhaps this was pretense as well; it was hard to tell who was working who. In the meantime, the two men turned their shoulders in such a way as to exclude him from the conversation. The old neighborhood thing.