Chinatown Beat (23 page)

She rolled the window down, saw the Bay rushing by and held her face into the wind.

By the time Jack reached Stockton there was nothing to see, only the taillights of traffic moving away, north and south. She could have gone either way.

He cursed and shook his head, and then went back for fun Yee, Johnny Wong jai wong.

Jack's life was in limbo, even as Major Case cops at LaGuardia took custody of Johnny, handcuffed to the wheelchair they rolled him away in.

Jack knew they'd expect a report, paperwork details, even though he was still officially suspended. He was crashing in the cab back to Sunset Park when he saw the discarded Newsday. An item about a burning body leaped out at him. He fought the numbing shock long enough to read it.

State Troopers from Dutchess County, alerted by campers, had discovered the burning body of a Chinese national dumped in a wooded area of the hamlet, sixty-two miles north of NewYork City. They suspected he had been murdered in Chinatown. The body showed signs of having been beaten and strangled. They'd found Chinese-language papers in his pocket.

DNA samples had been taken, and the Dutchess County Medical Examiner's office had sent evidence down to the 0-Five for assistance.

When Jack awoke it was night and chilly in the Brooklyn apartment. He dressed and rousted up a cab to Chinatown, went directly to the caller ID linked to his office tape machine. The woman's last message was locked to the location of the phone stand on Jackson, as he expected. It said, "Jun Yee did it. He was in love with me. He thought he was trying to protect me. I begged him not to, but he was crazy jealous. He could not hold the anger inside. Yes, Jun Yee killed the old man. So I could be free. He is in Saam Faansi…" He listened until the tape filled with traffic noise, and the operator ended the call. He left the tape machine, went down to the back basement of the stationhouse. Sergeant Murphy showed a newfound respect for him and allowed him a "look-see" at the evidence from the burning-body incident.

In a plastic bag were three items: a knockoff Pierre Cardin belt, an imitation Rolex watch, a Help-Wanted clipping from a Chinese newspaper.

There was a file of photographs, pictures of the torched body. The fake Rolex was on the victim's right wrist. So he was lefthanded, Jack thought. A facial profile shot, side partial of left cheek and ear that hadn't burned off. A shot of the back and shoulder displaying a tattoo of the Chinese word sot, meaning murder.

On his feet, scuffed black Timberland boots, the dirty boots that the little girl's grandmother had described.

Jack scanned the chart. The corpse measured five-foot-nine. A hundred and sixty pounds. Under Distinguishing Marks the examiner noted:

1) Tattoo, left shoulder-Oriental word

2) Auricle Meatus Minor, left

Jack took the DNA tests upstairs, dug out Cray's Anatomy and found Auricle, minor, a stunted malformation of the cartilage that inhibits growth of the outer ear. Caused by hormonal imbalance.

Small ears. Ali Por's words pounded in his head as he pulled the rapist's file. Height and weight, the physical description was a match.

Small ears and fire.

Wielded knife with left hand.

The burning body. Jack knew the DNA from the body and the rape semen would prove to be identical. The rapist could run and hide, change his face even, but he couldn't escape the atoms and molecules in which he was grounded, the protein of his being, DNA, a tattoo he couldn't erase.

Jack took a breath, knew it still didn't matter. Even if they were identical, the courts didn't allow DNA evidence as the sole basis for conviction. If the toasted corpse was the rapist, then it was Chinatown justice that had found its mark. The rapes had ceased. In essence and in spirit the case was closed.

Red Pole

"No identification on body," Jack typed in his report on the California shootout. "Suspected Hip Ching associate."

No one stepped forward to declare the tall man missing. No one came to claim the corpse.

Jack ran the profile, but nothing turned up under Outstanding Warrants/Fugitives. The man was a Chinese John Doe when he was shipped back to New York. If the DNA blood match from Alexandra's handkerchief, and that of the Los Angeles motel shooter came back positive, Jack wasn't going to be surprised.

In Chinatown Golo's charity funeral went unannounced. He was cremated without ceremony at Wah Sang and consigned to a hole at the edge of Potter's Field.

Wood And Steel

The package arrived at the 0-Five courtesy of UPS and found its way to Jack's desk. He handled it carefully, suspicious, setting it down on a shelf in one of the open lockers while he considered. It was wrapped in plain brown paper, the kind old women used to play mahjong on. The return address was the top of a store receipt, Asia Gifts, Inc., taped over the left corner. It bore a Chicago return address but a UPS barcode designated SF, for San Francisco. The numbers and letters of the precinct's address had been clipped from newsprint, and taped to the front.

Jack lifted the package and listened, then pulled his ear back, satisfied it wasn't a bomb. He sliced off the wrapping carefully, then slowly lifted back the flaps of the carton. Inside was a Chinese wooden box with a flat sliding drawer. A box within a box.

He pulled the drawer out gently, saw ivory first, then blued metal. It contained a lady's gun. In the back of the drawer was a tubularsteel silencer, and a folded piece of wrapping paper with Chinese words scrawled in black marker. When he unfolded it, he read, The Big Uncle was killed by his driver, known as Wongfai, plate #888.

Jack lifted the Titan outwith a pencil and ejected the clip. He knew Ballistics would work it for grooves, and Forensics for prints.

He wasn't expecting Mona's.

The Tropicali set sail from Seattle on October 17th, bound for Maui. She was under Liberian registry, was six-hundred-sixty-feet long, could accommodate a thousand passengers and still cruise three days through the North Pacific at twenty knots. The Tropicali had four passenger decks, three swimming pools, two dancefloors, a stage, a discotheque, and eight bars. There was a shopping mall and a beauty shop called the South Seas Salon. The decks were named Verandah, Empress, Riviera, Lido Promenade.

Mona had booked a cabin on the Empress level, two decks above the Lido Promenade where the gambling casino and bar were located. She occupied a corner unit of the deck just above the stairwell to the beauty salon. Away from the masses, but close enough to the exits. On Empress, she was surrounded by a cruise group of Japanese office ladies. Good enough cover, she hoped.

Crossing the vast blue Pacific, she'd gotten rid of the black clothes, gone to the beauty salon and had her hair cut shorter in a mannish style, streaked it with amber. She wore dark red lipstick. At Maui she went ashore and bought hand-dyed silks and batik clothing, the better to blend into the cruise milieu. Except for the bursar, and the room attendant, no one would suspect she was traveling alone.

In Hilo she lounged alone on the Lido Patio deck, the ship having emptied, all other passengers having gone ashore. Lush rainforest beckoned in the distance, emerald gorges slashing into cliffs of black lava. White coral coastline against the weathered browns, reds, and blues of buildings. Escape to paradise, she mused.

Kona drifted past, beneath the heady aroma of ginger blossoms, blankets of sugarcane. Then Nawiliwili. Kauai faded into the panorama of Oahu, banana farms and pineapple plantations sweeping down almost to the sea. Exotic flowers in deep sculpted valleys thick with mango, pomelo, lychee trees. She pressed the jade ornament into her palm. Changes, the jade whispered, changing.

When the Tropicali docked in Honolulu, she visited the Kwan Yin Temple in Chinatown, her shape lost within the flowing Hawaiian shirt, her face hidden behind sunglasses under a floppy straw hat. She offered flowers and oranges, burned incense as she whispered a prayer for forgiveness.

Stone

Johnny sat opposite Jack in the interrogation room at Rikers. He stared straight ahead with vacant eyes and spoke with a dead man's voice.

"She said," he began, "the old bastard had found out about us, that he had put out a contract on me. I had to leave town right away. She was going to leave later, meet up with me in Los Angeles. She said she was expecting some deal to happen. We were going to be partners, do something outside Chinatown. Maybe go up to Vancouver. Something."

Jack pushed the microphone closer. "Speak up," he said.

Johnny smirked. "I took the bus, three days to Los Angeles. I found out they killed Gee Man near my car."

"Who killed Gee Man?"

"You know who."

"You mean the Hip Chings?"

Johnny nodded silently, glanced at Jack making a notation in his pad. He said, "It was meant for me, you know." He took a breath, then spat out the words. "`Stay at the Holiday Inn,' she said. `Rent a car and come up north on Highway One.' She called me in L.A. and gave me directions. All along she set me up. Yeah, my prints are on the clip, but I didn't do the killing."

Jack watched him go distant.

"I just got her the gun. I showed her how it worked. I loaded it. That's how my prints got on it. And she set me up. She sent me running before the old man could get to me. The fuckin bitch. I'm innocent."

Captain Marino stood behind the big desk, said, "Way I see it, you went to San Francisco on your own time, while suspended. And brought back a dead illegal and the Uncle's killer."

He came around the desk.

"You got a box in the mail with the murder weapon inside. Who it's from, you don't know. And then there's the Uncle's girlfriend who got away."

He stood next to Jack now. "That sound right so far?"

Jack nodded into the Italian stare.

Captain Marino said, "Personally, I think you got a raw deal with Internal Affairs. I know, makes you wonder about being a cop. But for what it's worth, I think you did a good job." He shook his white-haired head. "Not easy being a cop these days."

Jack nodded again and left the big office, weighted down uneasily with the captain's gratitude.

It was almost eleven when the old men arrived quietly at the Hip Ching meeting hall, about the usual time of morning when they would normally be enjoying dim sum, snacks, and taking yum cha, tea, with the fragrance of oolong or chrysanthemum drifting above the round table in the back of the Joy Luck tea parlor.

The Hip Ching tong elders all knew about their leader's mistress, the one called Mona, the Hong Kong slut, the one they never mentioned for fear of causing him loss of face. Now they were faced with a dilemma. They'd discovered that money was missing, a hundred thousand dollars, from their benevolent community services account at the New Eastern Bank. It had been withdrawn, signed out in the Big Uncle's hand, four days before his untimely demise.

Now the loss of face was theirs. The free congee breakfast at the Senior Citizen's Center they sponsored would be affected, and they would have to cut back the supply of Similac formula and flu shots to the Children's Health Clinic. There would be no more elaborate Chinese NewYear's banquets.

Perhaps they could pay it off with money from other accounts, like the secret fund for free coffee and cakes at their daytime mahjong parlors? But quickly enough their words came back to the murder and the missing money. It had been all too clean and clever and they did not believe that the see gay to, lowly car driver, was smart enough to have pulled it off. Not without help, anyway. Now they needed his help to find the mistress. Find her, find the money, and wash the whole affair. They needed to show the driver something, in good faith, for his cooperation, even from the small jail cell he was in.

San Francisco, after all, was just another Chinatown away, and with the Chinese world so small nowadays, how far could she have gotten? Not so far that their tentacles could not reach her.

The white lawyer with the blue shark eyes and the easy suntan walked in wearing a Burburry raincoat, gripping a silver Hal- iburton briefcase like it was a fashion accessory. Captain Marino remembered him from past encounters. Sheldon Littman, celebrity lawyer, who'd gotten an acquittal for master-of-the-universe broker Robert Cox, in the "rough-sex "killing ofJane Levsky. Reasonable doubt was the name of his game.

"Shelly Littman," the captain said, deadpan. "That's impressive for a car jockey, Shelly. How can he afford an expensive suit like you?" "Couldn't be the Hip Ching paying, could it?" asked Jack.

The lawyer dismissed Jack with a glance and a smirk. "'C'hat, gentlemen, is none of your business. I'm here to confirm his pretrial deposition testimony, taken by the Legal Aid lawyer, with the good detective here, and I'd appreciate it if you didn't cast aspersions on anyone who might be involved in this case."

"Aspersions?' chuckled the captain. "I like that, Shelly. I gotta get a new thesaurus. So, okay, we won't say bad things about the lowlife player who got dragged in here for killing an old-time low-life bloodsucker." He gave Jack a wink. "He's all yours, counselor."

Littman coughed to clear his throat, then started. "Okay, Detective. You track my client all the way across the country, while you're on suspension, because some woman, you claim, called you on the phone and told you Mr. Wong's the killer, here he is, come and get him?"

"It wasn't that simple," Jack answered.

"Of course not, Detective, it never is, is it? Okay, and then, you receive, via UPS, from someone unknown, according to you, a weapon with an attachment of some kind, supposedly used to kill someone." He shook his head like he'd just recited a fairy tale to a three-year-old. Jack nodded in agreement. "And why does this "alleged informant" call you? Detective, do you have some personal interest in this case?"