Morales had a pretty good idea where Raul was hiding out. The punk had a girlfriend whose widowed mother owned a little bodega on 103rd Street, and the two women lived over the store. That’s probably where he is, reasoned Morales. Joey lets him discount her protection payments, so she can hardly refuse to take him in if he’s in trouble. Anyway, it’s not real trouble, like if he knifed somebody. Although shooting off his mouth could be a crime in Joey’s book. There were no grounds for a search warrant, so he’d have to talk his way in.
He waited until eleven a.m., after the morning rush and before the lunchtime crowd, and intercepted Mrs. Gomez as she came out from behind the counter to straighten up the magazine rack. He had known her since he was a juvenile delinquent boosting Hershey Bars and packs of Wrigley’s gum while her back was turned. In those days, he thought of himself as a master criminal, immune from detection.
It wasn’t until much later that he learned she knew exactly what he was doing and had ratted him out to his mother, who always came in and paid for whatever he took. He had a deep respect for them both—hardworking, uncomplaining women who held their families together as best they could. When Mrs. Gomez’s husband died and his own father deserted the family, the women just kept on keeping on.
When Hector turned eighteen, his mother had sat him down and had the talk with him. “I know you’ve been kind of wild,” she said, not in a scolding way but matter-of-fact. She told him about paying for what he stole from the bodega and that she knew he hung out with boys who did worse things, like stealing cars and mugging people. What she didn’t say was whether she knew he’d done those things himself a few times. “I smell the marijuana on your clothes,” she said, “but I don’t mention it because you only smoke it to go along with your friends.” He didn’t understand what she was getting at. She wasn’t judging him or telling him to stop acting badly.
He felt embarrassed that he’d been so inept. And she had covered for him. That made him even more embarrassed. Suddenly, he’d realized this was all wrong. She should have been ashamed of him, behaving like a fool, not caring about the future, letting her down. But she wasn’t.
Not in so many words, she was telling him she had faith in him. After all, he had graduated from high school—not dropped out like so many other boys in the neighborhood—and even had decent grades. Luckily none of his petty crimes had attracted the attention of the law. He knew this was a turning point, and it was his decision which way to turn.
Hector Morales had turned right—right into the police academy. As one of the few Hispanic recruits in the 1920s, he was subject to plenty of ribbing, some good-natured, some malicious. But he shrugged it off, didn’t blow his top like a dumb street hoodlum with a hair trigger. That was the old Hector, the one he was determined to leave behind.
To his friends’ astonishment and his mother’s delight, he took to policing as if he had been born on the force. He never slacked off, never took favors or gave them, and earned a reputation for honesty. Even after the introduction of a new cleaning product prompted the nickname Spic and Span, he didn’t take offense. Instead he joked that he was the only clean officer in the Twenty-Third.
After five years as a patrolman, he put in for detective and won promotion on the first try. Now, at age thirty-three, he had perfected the art of investigative policing. Behind his back, they now called him El Zorro, the fox. He knew it and was proud of it.
He towered over Mrs. Gomez but made no effort to intimidate her. Instead, he leaned down and embraced her warmly, planting a kiss on each of her plump cheeks. Usually she would reciprocate, but not this time. Her uneasiness told him that he had guessed correctly.
“I know he is here, little mother,” he said in Spanish. “I need to talk to him. I don’t have a warrant, but tell him I do, so he won’t blame you for letting me in.”
Her distress was evident. “I had to take him. He said Joey wanted him out of the way for a while. Just a couple of days. How could I say no?”
The question was rhetorical. “Of course you could not,” Morales replied. “Your Gloria is foolish to run around with a loser like Raul, but she does, so you are stuck with him.” He smiled understandingly, and Mrs. Gomez grimaced.
“He is a pig,” she said. “Does not lift a finger, expects us to wait on him. He has only been here since yesterday evening, and Gloria is as sick of him as I am. I wish you did have a warrant.”
“Once I’m in,” the detective explained, “I do not need a warrant to arrest him if he withholds evidence in connection with a crime, and I have reason to believe he will—or at least try to, until I persuade him otherwise.”
Forty-Eight
Detective Morales followed Mrs. Gomez up the back stairs that led from the office to the apartment above the bodega. First he had asked her to lock the street entrance and back door in case his target made a run for it. He knew the apartment layout and figured he could corner Raul before he caught on, but why take a chance? Mrs. Gomez said he had set himself up in the living room.
“The lazy bum is probably on the couch. No way would I give him my bed, and he is certainly not sleeping with my Gloria,” she insisted. “She is a good girl.”
“Is she here?” he asked.
“No, she is at work. She works at the Cosmo two days a week, in the box office. She wants to help out, more than just in the shop. To bring in some money, you know. Such a good girl. Not like that boyfriend of hers. Never offered a penny to pay for his food.” She made a noise that indicated just what she thought of him.
They climbed the stairs in silence. When they reached the second floor, Morales motioned to Mrs. Gomez to walk ahead of him. Her heels clicked on the bare wood, a sound Raul recognized. He was sitting on the couch, playing solitaire on the coffee table.
“Hey, mama,” he bellowed without looking up, “I’m dying of thirst, bring me a beer.”
His only manners are bad ones, Morales thought. I’ll teach the little jerk some respect. He moved out from behind Mrs. Gomez, who retreated to the kitchen, and was blocking the exit before Raul realized who he was.
“You want a beer, you can get it yourself,” he said, “but not before we have a little talk.”
For a moment Raul was too startled to reply. He had crossed paths with the detective more than once, but his main contact with the law was a nod to the beat cops who looked the other way when he made his collections. He quickly tried to mask his surprise with a smirk.
“Well, if it ain’t Spic and Span. Nice of you to drop in.” He rose from the sofa. “I was just leaving.”
Morales was on him before he was fully upright. “Don’t be in a hurry, Raul. It’s not polite.” A firm hand eased the young man back onto the seat.
Raul was indignant. “You can’t push me around, cop. I ain’t done nothing.”
Morales loomed over him. “I heard different.”
The smirk was back. “You’re blowing smoke, Morales.” He started to rise again.
The detective’s hand shot out and grabbed Raul’s shirt, dragging him up to standing but keeping him slightly off balance. It happened so quickly that Raul was caught off guard. Before he could recover, Morales pulled him close and spoke very softly. He found this tactic far more effective than shouting.
“We’re going to have that conversation now, Raul. And you need to mind your manners. You’ll address me as Detective Morales or sir. Otherwise I’ll arrange a blue shadow for you. I can make things very hard for you on the street, so hard that Joey will cut you loose. He’s already wondering if you’re a liability. You know that word?” He tightened his grip a bit.
Raul took a moment to weigh his options. Then he caved. “Yeah, I know it. Sir.”
“Good. We understand each other.” Morales let him loose.
Raul sank down on the couch, smoothing out his bunched shirtfront.
Morales took a chair opposite him. “Let’s
keep it quiet so we don’t disturb Mrs. Gomez,” he advised. Now his tone was neutral, neither threatening nor friendly, harder for Raul to read.
“I don’t care about the sailor’s deal with Joey,” he began, taking Raul by surprise again. Not blowing smoke after all. “What I’m interested in is the homicide. Has it occurred to you that the sailor may have been the guy who killed Lam? And if he did, and you’re covering for him, you’re an accessory to murder.”
Saturday morning, October 16
Anne emerged from the subway at Christopher Street and headed east toward Lam’s apartment, only a block from her own. She had resolved to confront him, try to bribe him, even threaten him with the police if he didn’t give up the smuggling scheme, but she was beginning to have second thoughts. What if Roberto was there? She was keeping an eye out for him on the street, but he might be at Lam’s. In that case, she told herself, she would have to confront them both and suffer the consequences.
What if she was too late and Lam was already on his way with the drugs to wherever he was planning to sell them? As she reached his building, she squared her shoulders. Only one way to find out.
She rang the bell. It was answered. The latch was released, and she went in.
When she reached Lam’s third-floor apartment, the door was open. She paused for a moment, listening for voices, hoping she wouldn’t hear Roberto’s. It was quiet, so she knocked and called out to Lam.
“Hello, Fredo. It’s Anne Matta. I need to speak to you.”
Lam stepped out of the studio, a puzzled expression on his face. He was clearly expecting someone else.
“Anne. What a surprise. I thought, ah…” he stammered. She was supposed to be at her parents’ place in Connecticut, safely out of the way. He stopped himself, realized he was being rude. “Are you looking for Roberto?”
“No,” she said. “I thought he might be here, but I’m relieved that he isn’t.” She closed the door and advanced toward him. “I know about the shipment,” she began, looking him in the eye, not giving him a chance to interrupt. “What you are doing is wrong, not just morally. It’s criminal, as I’m sure you know. All three of you could go to jail. Maybe you and David are willing to risk that, but Roberto has a family to think of.”
Lam was taken aback. How could she know? Surely Matta hadn’t told her. Somehow she had found out, and she was furious. If Carlos showed up now, she could cause real trouble. How to get rid of her? Perhaps he could make her see reason.
“Don’t you realize it’s the family that he is thinking of? There’s no market for his paintings, not yet anyway, and how long can he go on sponging off your parents before he loses all self-respect? This is his chance to make enough money to support you and the twins.”
“If he’s so desperate to earn money,” she countered, “he can go back to practicing architecture or work in a defense plant or something else, anything that’s legal.” She was beginning to seethe. “You put him up to this. I heard you planning it in August. At the time I thought it was just a stupid pipe dream. I never thought you’d go through with it.”
She gave Lam a hard look. “When I came in, you were expecting someone to pick up the drugs, weren’t you? They’re here, aren’t they? The ship arrived yesterday.”
“The package never came, Anne. Something went wrong. The deal is off.”
“You’re lying,” she shouted, her anger and frustration building. “I know it’s here. I’ll buy it from you. I can get the money. How much do you want for it?”
“Please, Anne, I don’t have it,” he insisted. That was not a lie. “Besides, where would you get the money? From your father? I’d like to hear you explain why you want it.”
She had thought about that on the train ride down from Darien. Obviously going to her parents was out of the question. “I’ll get it from Peggy. She won’t want to see any of her artists mixed up in something like this.”
She barged into the studio and began moving around the room, looking for hiding places, with no idea just what she was looking for, what sort of package, how big.
After she had made a thorough search of Lam’s apartment, Anne headed back uptown to catch a return train to Darien. It had not taken her long to satisfy herself that the drugs weren’t there. The apartment was small—only two rooms and a kitchen—and Lam had little furniture. The studio, with its worktable, easel, and props, offered few places of concealment, though she looked behind the African mask hanging on the wall by the fireplace and behind the tall mirror leaning next to it, and turned the rubber chicken’s foot upside down and shook it. Likewise the galoshes in the kitchen, where the cabinet under the sink was also inspected.
When she started to rummage through his things, Lam tried to stop her. He grabbed her arm as she reached for the mask. “Don’t touch that,” he cried. “It’s magic!”
“So that’s where it is,” she hissed, and wrenched her arm free, pushing him away with all the strength her anger and desperation could muster. Caught off balance, he stumbled back, tripped on the hearth, and fell, hitting his head on the marble mantelpiece, a remnant of the building’s former life as a comfortable town house. With a moan, he crumpled to the floor and lay in a heap at her feet.
Seizing the advantage, Anne continued her search without interference. Her attention called to the fireplace, she peered up the chimney but saw only sooty blackness, no ledge or niche where a package could be stashed. The rest of her efforts proved equally frustrating. In the bedroom, she checked the drawers, the closet, under the pillows on the bed, under the mattress. When her search turned up nothing, she assumed Lam had told the truth and the drugs were already in Chinatown. By the time she finished, he was coming around.
She had to go. She had been away for nearly two hours, and it would take her another hour to get back to her parents’ house. A longer absence would be hard to explain. She couldn’t say she’d been for a leisurely drive, since her father would surely notice that there was hardly any more mileage on the odometer. Her only excuse was a quiet morning of window-shopping along Main Street, lunch at the soda fountain, perhaps a walk in Tilly Pond Park or down to the beach at Pear Tree Point.
Once on the train, Anne cursed herself for not having acted sooner. She should have confronted the three of them back in August, when she heard them hatching the scheme. She should have told Roberto that she knew what was going on when the letter arrived from Colombia in September. And now she had missed her opportunity to intercept the shipment. Damn, damn, damn—the words seemed to echo in her head, but it was only the train’s pulsing rhythm.
Anne collected her thoughts. No use agonizing over past mistakes. What to do now? Only one thing. Stop it from happening again.
Forty-Nine
Monday afternoon, October 18
By the time Ricky Wong rang Yun Gee’s buzzer, the artist had made the studio more presentable. After he got back from On Leong, he had focused on the room and was disgusted by its condition. Visiting the tong headquarters had sobered him but good. “My mother would die if she could see me like this,” he said out loud. But she was in China, and she hadn’t seen him in more than two decades.
He looked again at the canvas that always hung prominently in whatever studio he occupied, the one he called Where Is My Mother. He’d painted it when he was only twenty-one and about to leave San Francisco for Paris, thousands of miles farther away from her. It was the self-portrait of a young man suspended between two worlds, staring out of a fragmented environment where home and family were concepts as abstract as the painting’s cubist structure. The tears that streamed down his cheeks were echoed on his mother’s, but he did not comfort her. He had turned his back on that world and seemed to know he would never return.
He went to work right away. The rest of the day was spent cleaning and tidying until the place was looking orderly, with the floor swept, the dishes washed, the blanket neatly folded on the couch
, his clothes put away, and his materials laid out as they should be. That was the way he liked things. Even if they were shabby, they didn’t have to be messy, dirty, as if he didn’t care. Then he took a sponge bath in the studio slop sink and put on a clean shirt.
Being on his own like this was not good for him. He knew he should go home and make up with Helen; in fact, he couldn’t even remember what they had quarreled about. When he thought of her and their beautiful baby daughter in the apartment she kept so nice, with the birdcages and his chessboard and his art books and musical instruments all arranged just so, he felt very sorry for himself. That was his world now, he reminded himself, and he was lucky to have it.
Then Gee remembered what the fight was about—his drinking. Remorsefully, he emptied the rest of the pint of Four Roses into the sink. He took the bottle and the other empties with him as he left and dumped them in the trash barrel on the corner. Then he headed home.
When he came back on Monday, it was not to escape from his wife’s disapproval. With the resilient optimism of youth—she was only twenty-three to his thirty-seven—she had forgiven him again. Once more he resolved to stay sober and get to work. He was preparing a new canvas when he heard the buzzer and looked out the studio window to see a young Chinese man standing at the door. He felt a mixture of concern and relief. If On Leong was involved, they wouldn’t have sent anyone to tell me, he reasoned. He pressed the latch release.
Ricky Wong was a pimply teenager with bad teeth and a swagger that masked his lack of sophistication. Probably someone’s Cantonese relative who’s been shipped to America for training, thought Gee. He knew the type. He had been born in that region.
Ricky was practicing his rudimentary English. He talked like a joke Chinaman, what the white culture contemptuously called a Charlie. “Bossman senme,” he said.
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