White Ghost (12 page)

I
need to postpone my treatment.” Gage told Dr. Stern after he and Faith sat down in her office at Stanford. “There's something I need to do. It'll take two weeks, maybe three.”

“Unless you're planning to discover a cure for lymphoma during those weeks, I'm not sure you have the time. You're not that far from stage four. Suppose it invades your kidneys, or liver, or stomach, or brain? The chances of stopping it plummet. Even if that doesn't happen, what good are you going to be doubled up in some hotel bathroom?”

Stern glanced down at Gage's open medical file, then shook her head. “Where, exactly, do you intend to go if I can't stop you?”

“China. I don't know where else.”

“Acupuncture, fish eyes, and elk penis aren't going to stop the disease or even help with the symptoms.”

Stern turned to Faith. “What do you think?”

“I don't want him to go, but I understand why.” Faith paused and bit her lip, then said, “If you agree, then I can accept it.”

Stern turned back to Gage. “Tell me.”

“It's a personal thing,” Gage said, touching his chest.

“Does it have anything to do with that scar?” Stern pointed at him. “It looked like a .357 or a 9mm. I worked in the emergency room at SF Medical before going into oncology. I handled four or five gunshot victims a night.”

“I can't answer that.”

“There's such a thing as a doctor-patient privilege. Spill it.”

Gage paused and looked at Faith. She nodded.

“You don't repeat any of this and all you put in my file is that the patient decided to delay treatment. No explanation.”

“You've got a deal.”

Gage nodded. “A long time ago I was a homicide detective in San Francisco.”

“I know.”

“How do you know?”

“When I am not forcing patients to get the treatment they need, I read the papers, I watch the news. It's an odd thing. A psychologist”—she glanced at Faith—“or maybe an anthropologist, needs to look into it. When people get cancer and show up here, somehow they start to think they're anonymous, maybe because cancer shuts them off from the world, maybe it's because people who spent their lives caring about others are forced to focus on themselves. It's very human. In fact, it's more than a matter of anonymity, it's like they feel invisible. But they aren't. And you aren't. So, years ago . . .”

“My partner and I caught one of three overnight homicides. Ours was typical for Chinatown in those days. Execution style. No known witnesses. But then an old informant named Snake Eyes paged me as I was leaving the victim's autopsy late the next afternoon. He put in 911, meaning urgent, and our code for where to meet.

“We'd done a lot of big cases. Sometimes he informed for money, sometimes to get out of jail. We did a lot of damage to the tongs and triads.

“By the time I drove up, Snake Eyes was already at his spot by Portsmouth Square, leaning against a restaurant wall across from where the old men play mah-jongg. I grabbed a city map and walked up to him, playing tourist. He glanced at it as if helping me with directions then pointed toward Spofford Lane and whispered to me that he knew where the killer in my case was hiding.”

“Was he after money again?” Stern asked.

“And to get his brother out from under a federal gun case. Twenty-year minimum. I was willing to make the deal because I was close to nailing his brother on an extortion case anyway, so it didn't make a difference. He'd do at least ten.”

Gage spread his hands. “Spofford Lane is like a box canyon. Six-story buildings framing the end of the street, like an echo chamber.”

He thought back on the cascading clicks of mah-jongg tiles from the second-floor gambling parlors and the thud of cleavers dismembering chickens and splitting pork ribs, the sizzle of fat hitting wok oil, kitchen workers yelling and laughing.

“It's odd that after all those years the sounds I heard there are as real as my cell-phone ring is now.”

“Were you scared to go in there?”

“A little edgy. I didn't intend to walk in too far. About a third of the way down, Snake Eyes stops and turns toward me; the expression on his face wasn't like we were finally getting to the heart of what he had to say, but like resignation.”

Gage shook his head.

“I can't say I even heard the gunshot. Just felt the slug punch into my chest. Actually it was less than a punch, more like somebody poked me with their finger. I turned to run, but my legs went out from under me.

“I spotted a dead-eyed Chinese guy step around from behind
a Dumpster, then I looked up at Snake Eyes. All he said was, ‘Sorry, man; they got my sister.'

“I heard footsteps and grabbed for the Beretta in my holster, but hands locked onto me and held me down. A Vietnamese guy yanked it out. I was as scared as I've ever been. I figured they were going to finish me off with my own gun.

“The guy stood over me, rolling the gun over his hand. Then he fired. Not at me. At Snake Eyes. At first Snake Eyes didn't get it. He just stood there, with his hands wrapped across his stomach, blood oozing through his fingers. He dropped to his knees and his expression changed when he grasped that he'd been set up just like he'd set me up. The shooter kicked him in the ribs, knocked him over, and slammed the side of his face into the blacktop.”

Gage paused, now remembering the silence in the alley, the shots snuffing out the kitchen sounds, freezing the gamblers and cooks in their places.

“Remember, they still had me pinned down. The shooter wiped off the Beretta and forced it into my hand. He pressed the barrel against the back of Snake Eyes's head and used my finger to pull the trigger.

“I was sure I was next. A two-for-one. But then they backed away. I'm trying to stay conscious. Hoping I could ID somebody, but they evaporated. I looked up and searched the apartment windows. They were as dead as blank television screens. Except one. There were these two eyes staring down at me. And that was the last thing I saw before I passed out.”

Gage shook his head as he thought about what happened next.

“I had already been suspended by the time I woke up in the recovery room. The only reason I was alive was because somebody called 911. There was lots of bad publicity. Headlines about
a rogue cop executing a gangster. I figured it would blow over. But six weeks later, the case was at the grand jury.”

Stern raised her hand. “But how could—”

“The FBI took over the investigation and turned up three eyewitnesses who claimed I shot Snake Eyes first, then Snake Eyes shot me back in self-defense, and then I finished him off before I collapsed.

“But a couple of weeks later, people in the department were telling me an FBI agent named Joe Casey had refused to close the case even though the DA was a few days away from indicting me. So I called him up.”

“Didn't you have an attorney fighting for you?”

Gage nodded. “Hired by the Police Officers Association. The kind that yells in court about how his clients are innocent, then cuts deals. And he was pushing me to take a manslaughter offer from the DA. If I pled out, they wouldn't charge me with murder. Instead of twenty-five to life, I'd do a flat fifteen, and the department would avoid a long trial with bad publicity.

“Casey only agreed to meet me if I brought a letter saying I was representing myself and signed a Miranda waiver. We met at the alley an hour later.

“Based on the evidence he'd been looking at, I guessed what had been bothering him. The first thing he'd done was examine Snake Eyes's shirt. A guy in the property room showed it to me after Casey had looked at it. What had troubled him was the footprint, the ball of somebody's shoe—”

“Which meant that somebody had kicked him over and—”

“The tread mark didn't match mine.”

Gage held up two fingers.

“The second thing was the gunshot residue pattern. It was on my fingers and my windbreaker. Not the back of my hand or my palm.

“As we were standing out there, Casey was getting annoyed because I was reading his mind.”

Gage pointed down.

“He had his briefcase in his hand and I guessed what was in it. I told him to show me the photos. One showed the blood spatter pattern on the pavement. I traced it out. It meant that Snake Eyes's head had to have been in contact with the blacktop, left side down, but the witnesses claimed I was standing over him when I shot him.

“He gave me some lame excuse about witnesses not being computers, but I knew what he was really saying. The DA couldn't ignore eyewitness testimony in a high-profile case and still get reelected.”

“But there was another witness.”

Gage nodded. “A terrified one. Her uncle denied it was her and claimed she was in school at the time of the shooting. And she'd said the same thing to the detectives when they caught up with her.”

“What about the record of the 911 call?”

“It was local and it came from a phone booth. But I was sure it was her. Her voice. She was the only one out there who did anything to save my life and I figured that meant that she wanted it saved for something more than me serving fifteen years in prison.”

“Why didn't you go over—”

“And see her myself? I was afraid of being accused of witness tampering.

“A long week later, Casey called. His first words were, ‘I talked to her today. Her name is Ling and she remembered something. Something she couldn't have gotten from television reports.” Gage gripped his biceps. “It was the bruises on my arms and shoulders where they'd held me down. They showed in the
photos that were taken in the hospital. Everybody thought they were from the paramedics.

“He also told me that an hour after he left her apartment, some gangster sprayed it with about fifteen rounds. Ling caught one in the hip and one just above her knee.”

Stern covered her mouth.

“Her uncle lucked out and was at a doctor's appointment. One went straight through the back of the chair he always sat in. Despite all that, she was still willing to testify.”

“But could she identify the men who shot you?”

“She knew them all. She worked in a massage parlor in Chinatown. Her boss had to pay for protection and the women—”

“You mean she was a prostitute?”

Gage nodded. “But she'd been saving her money and going to community college during the day.”

“What about the three witnesses?”

“They confessed in a heartbeat when Casey threatened to prosecute them as accessories after the fact. The gang paid them ten grand up front and they were supposed to get another ten after I was convicted.”

Stern seemed transfixed as Gage came to the end of the story, lost in a final image of Ling, now Linda Sheridan, emerging from hiding to testify against those who'd shot Gage and murdered Snake Eyes, then fading away. Cut off from family and friends, alone and isolated by a secret defining her adult identity.

“Did they let you see her?”

“After her last day of testimony. Casey set up a meeting at the DA's office in the Hall of Justice.”

“What did you say? I mean what could you say?”

Gage stiffened. “I'd rather not talk about that. Let's just say I thanked her and hadn't seen her since, until yesterday. Her son got involved with gangsters like those ones who shot me. He was killed. He was only sixteen years old. A confused and angry sixteen.”

“Can't anyone else . . . ?”

“No.”

Stern looked at Gage, weighing something in her mind.

“Excuse me a moment,” Stern rose and left the room.

Faith rose also, then crossed her arms across her chest and shivered. “Why do they keep these places so cold?”

Stern returned a few minutes later carrying a prescription pad.

“I still think you're dead wrong to do this, but I looked at the CT scans and your blood work. You're still under the thresholds we talked about.”

She sat down at the desk and began writing.

“Take your own syringes if you have any doubt about safety, particularly in China.” She tore off the prescription and handed it to him. “Use them to get some blood drawn and get it tested every week.”

Stern looked down, thought for a moment, then wrote again.

“This is for nausea. I'm not sure how much it'll help, but it may a little. As for the dizziness, you're going to have to live with it.” She slid over the prescription and started on another. “And if any of these symptoms interfere with your sleep, take one of these.”

“What do you want me to do with the blood results?”

“I'll e-mail you a list of values and the range of increases or decreases for each one that we can accept. If the results exceed those parameters, I need you to come home. You understand?”

“Yes,” Faith said, looking over at Gage. “He understands.”

“I want to hear my patient say it.”

Gage nodded. “I understand.”

Then he felt Faith's eyes on him. They both knew something Stern couldn't know: that when he came home—or even whether he'd come home alive—wasn't entirely in his hands.

J
oe,” Gage said walking up to Joe Casey in a booth in Denny's in San Jose, “this is Sylvia Washington.”

“Nice to meet you.” Casey stood and shook her hand. “I saw the news coverage when you went down.” He smiled. “At least you got the bad guy. How's the shoulder?”

“Good as new.”

Gage knew it wasn't, but that's all she'd ever say about it.

After the waitress poured them coffee, Gage laid out his theory about Ah Ming shipping the computer chips to China.

“Tell me what you need,” Casey said, “and I'll tell you if I can give it to you.”

Gage slid over a list of the company names Alex Z had abstracted from the documents in Ah Tien's briefcase and the papers Lester Hardiman had taken off his body.

“The most important thing I need to know is whether there's any criminal intelligence information on these companies.”

Casey read down the list and set it aside. He then took a sip of coffee as he ordered his thoughts.

“First, I know what you're going to do next.” Casey raised his palms toward Gage. “But don't tell me. I don't want to end up in
the middle of a diplomatic explosion if you get caught and are seen as a proxy for the FBI.

“Second, since whatever I find may involve active cases and informants, all I'll be able to tell you is whether or not the names of these companies have come up in other investigations and whether you're on the right track. I won't be able to give you details.

“And third, if anyone asks, you're just a guy I knew a very long time ago.”

“How soon can you find out whether any of the local companies just shipped out a container?” Gage pointed at the list. “Especially Sunny Glory. It's coded in Ah Tien's address book. It has offices here and in Taiwan and shows up in some shipping documents.”

“I'll call ICE this afternoon. The rest will take a couple of days.” Casey paused for a moment, then said, “And there's one more thing. Ah Ming's been a crook for thirty years, maybe more. No one has even gotten close to getting him, and this may be the only chance for the next thirty years. Like my wife would say, it's like the planets are aligned. You're the only one I know who has the connections and savvy to maybe pull this off. But be careful; there are too many bad ways this can end.”

G
AGE'S CELL RANG
as he and Sylvia drove out of the Denny's parking lot. It was Casey.

“Hey, man, is Sylvia okay? She said nothing during the whole lunch. I heard she was a pit bull when she was a cop, but today she was more like a lapdog.”

“It's nothing.” Gage glanced over at her in the passenger seat. “Just a complicated case and she's new to the international angles. That's all.”

Gage disconnected, then pulled to the curb in front of a car lot and looked over.

“What is it?” he said.

“I don't think you should be doing this.”

“The other day you told me you really wanted to get this guy.”

“That was the other day. This is now. I did some research. If they're telling you to get treatment, you should do it, instead of—”

“I got a note from the doctor and a hall pass, too.”

“I'm being serious.”

“So am I. I made a deal with one of the best oncologists in the country. If things start to go bad, I'll come back.”

“I still don't like it.” Sylvia stared ahead at the cars driving by. “I never told you this because I thought you'd think I was a wimp, but when the department dumped me after I got shot, I went into a tailspin. They had guys over there who were too fat to get in and out of a patrol car without greasing up, and they dump me because my shoulder couldn't do a 360. Being a cop was my whole life. If you hadn't shown up . . . I mean, when you walked into my room in the physical therapy department, it was like I had something to hold on to, like I was worth something again.”

“So you figure you owe me something?”

“Exactly.”

“And if I needed you to take a risk, you'd do it?”

“In a heartbeat.”

“And I owe Peter's mother something. She went to the limit for me and I'm doing the same for her.”