Serious Crimes (A Willows and Parker Mystery)

by Laurence Gough

  Mrs Lee had stopped crying. Willows glanced at Parker. There was something going on between Melinda and her mother — he had a sense of unresolved conflict. He wanted to separate them. Parker, catching Willows’ eye, immediately realized what he wanted.

  “Melinda, would you mind showing me the kitchen? I’d like a glass of water.”

  Melinda stared at her. After a moment she said, “Yes, of course.” As she led Parker out of the room, she spoke briefly to her mother in Cantonese. Willows saw the old woman’s eyes narrow. He wondered what Melinda had said — a warning of some kind?

  Willows moved the wingback chair a little closer to the rocker.

  “The problem is motive,” said Willows bluntly. Mrs Lee watched him, her eyes bright. He said, “If someone killed your husband, it was done for a reason. A large gambling debt he couldn’t pay or refused to pay. Or something to do with his business… A partnership offer he turned down, an article he printed… Do you know what extortion is?”

  Mrs Lee burst into tears, the sound of her anguish filling the living room.

  Willows sat there, waiting.

  Mrs Lee stood up. The black shawl puddled on the pale green carpet. She walked slowly and silently across the room to the writing desk by the window, eased open the top drawer and withdrew a plain white envelope. In a voice fragile as a paper flower, Mrs Lee said, “There was one telephone call. It came on Sunday, the tenth. My husband was on the line. He sounded as if he was in pain. He told me he’d been kidnapped, and that the people who held him wanted two hundred and fifty thousand dollars.”

  Mrs Lee slid shut the drawer. She made her way slowly back to the rocking chair. Willows handed her the shawl. His eyes were on the envelope, but he didn’t let his impatience show.

  “My husband spoke in a monotone, almost as if he had been drugged, and he spoke only for a few brief moments. He ignored my questions, and he forbade me to call the police. Then he told me I was to pay nothing, not one penny.”

  She handed Willows the envelope. He held it by the edges, between his thumb and index finger.

  “As he told me not to pay, there was a cry of pain, and the line went dead.” Mrs Lee stared at the envelope in Willows’ hand. “He did not want me to involve the police, but I had already done so. And that is why I telephoned Detective Wilcox and told him my husband was safe.”

  Willows made a gesture of sympathy. “You didn’t hear from him again?”

  “There were no more telephone calls. But two days later, in the morning, I found that someone had slipped that envelope through the mailbox.”

  “What does the envelope contain?”

  “As you would expect. A demand for the money. But for one hundred thousand dollars, this time.”

  “Could you have afforded to pay?”

  “Eventually, perhaps. At the bank there is a joint account but it never contains more than a few thousand dollars. There are other accounts, but I know nothing of them, other than that they exist. My husband was a very secretive man. He did not think there was any need for me to have access to the accounts.”

  “Would you have paid, had you been able to?”

  “Yes,” said Mrs Lee firmly.

  “Given more time, could you have raised the money from outside sources? Friends, relatives…”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Would the kidnappers be aware of this?”

  “It is impossible to say.”

  “Were there any further attempts at communication?”

  “No.”

  The fireplace was gas-fed. The flames danced across the ceramic logs, radiating heat.

  Willows said, “You did what you could. All that matters now is catching the man who killed your husband.”

  Another burst of tears.

  Parker and Melinda came back into the room. The girl sat down on the carpet next to her mother.

  “The phone call,” said Willows. “When your husband was on the line, did you hear any other voices, someone in the background?”

  “Yes, yes.” She stared at Willows. “How did you know of this?”

  “What kind of voice was it?”

  “A woman’s. Young.”

  “Was she talking to your husband, or to someone else?”

  “Not to my husband.”

  “Could she have been Chinese? Did you notice an accent of any kind?”

  “No.”

  “Was it a local call?”

  A look of confusion crossed Mrs Lee’s face.

  “Could it have been long distance?” said Parker. “Did you hear the jingle of coins, an operator’s voice?”

  “No, nothing like that.”

  “Was there any background noise? Traffic, some kind of machinery, music…”

  “Yes, there was the woman’s voice and then there was music.”

  “What kind?”

  Mrs Lee turned to her daughter, spoke rapidly in Cantonese.

  “Country and western,” said Melinda. “Very loud. The woman’s voice my mother mentioned? It was the voice of a radio disc-jockey.”

  Willows had several more questions. He asked them one by one, and the answers he received were detailed and totally uninformative. Half an hour later, he gave Mrs Lee his card. “If you think of anything else…”

  “We’ll call you,” said Melinda.

  “Right away,” said Willows. “I can be reached any time during the day or night.”

  “Yes, thank you.”

  “Your brother, Peter, will be coming home for the funeral?”

  “Of course.”

  “When he arrives, would you mind asking him to give me a call?”

  “Why, what do you wish to speak to him about?”

  Willows smiled. “Nothing in particular. Just a few routine questions.”

  Outside, a skim of frost had collected on the Ford’s windshield. Willows turned the heater on full, and then the wipers. The ice slowly turned to slush.

  “Any thoughts?” said Parker.

  “The girl kept butting in.”

  “Protecting her mother, that’s all.”

  “And Peter. You see the look on her face when I said I wanted to talk to him?”

  Parker said, “She’s just a kid. Scared, doing her best to cope. Peter’s in Boston. Her mother spends all day in her rocking chair. So she’s stuck with the job of trying to be head of the family.”

  “Acting a role she’s too young to play.”

  “You got it.”

  “You’re probably right,” said Willows.

  The windshield had cleared. He turned off the wipers and put the Ford in gear.

  They took the white envelope containing the ransom note down to CLEU, the Coordinated Law Enforcement Unit facilities on East Eighth that were shared by the City and neighbouring municipalities. A technician named Albert Witte pulled on a pair of disposable latex gloves and shook the letter out of the envelope and on to his desk. Witte was about five foot ten, thin. His hair was combed straight back and he had pale blue, washed-out eyes. He wore a white lab coat over wide-wale green corduroy pants and a matching vest.

  “Very unusual,” he said. “Very creative.”

  The ransom note consisted of words and phrases that had been cut out of magazines and newspapers and then glued to a sheet of stiff cardboard. The note was short and to the point.

  Witte said, “This is the newspaper guy, body turned up in that pond in Chinatown?”

  Willows nodded.

  “First thing we’ll do is dust for prints. Use the laser if we can’t pick anything up. Also, we should be able to figure out what newspapers and magazines were used. The brand of glue, you want it.” Witte studied the envelope. He said, “It’ll take us a while, but we can determine who manufactured the envelopes. From the envelope flap, we might be able to figure out a blood type. Got a suspect?”

  “Not yet.”

  “There’s a rush on this, naturally.”

  “Naturally.”

  “I’ll get at it first thing in
the morning.”

  “Why not right now?”

  “Because I go home in five minutes.”

  “Put in some overtime.”

  “For what, so I can pay higher taxes?”

  Willows said. “What do I have to do, make a phone call?”

  “It’s your quarter,” said Witte, smiling. “Do what you want with it. I got to tell you, though, it’d be less of a waste if you stuffed it up your ass.”

  Back in the Ford, Willows stared moodily out the windshield at the gray slush, hunched pedestrians. He said, “When I was a kid, we had one of those old wringer washing machines, but no dryer. In the winter, mom hung our clothes out on the line on the back porch to dry. When it was really cold, below freezing, she’d bring in the laundry and everything would be stiff as a board. Sometimes I’d grab one of the towels and pretend it was a magic carpet. Sit a doll on one and run around the house…”

  “You had a doll?”

  “My sister had dolls. I’d borrow ’em.”

  Parker smiled. “I just can’t picture a tough guy like you playing with dolls, Jack.”

  Willows nodded his understanding. “Yeah, neither can I, sometimes. Childhood. Time steals it away, along with every other goddamn thing you ever thought you owned. I don’t know why it is, but after a while it all seems as if it happened to somebody else.”

  “You’re thinking about Melinda Lee.”

  “Acting the adult. Trying to protect her mother from something.”

  “From us, maybe?”

  “Maybe,” said Willows. “You get anything out of her while you were in the kitchen?”

  “Only that the fridge’s automatic defroster wasn’t working.”

  Willows waited for a break in the traffic and then turned right on Oak, towards the city.

  “Most of my sister’s dolls were blondes or redheads, but my favourite had brown eyes and short black hair.”

  “Just like me,” said Parker.

  “No,” said Willows, grinning. “Just like my mother.”

  Chapter 10

  There was a pool hall on East Hastings that Billy liked to go to — it had a brass button on the door you had to push and if the guy inside didn’t object to the way you looked, he’d hit another button and a buzzer would sound and you could go inside. The first time Billy had gone there he’d spent a couple of hours hanging out on the sidewalk in front of the place, leaning on a parking meter and smoking. Watching the citizens go by. He’d been broke and had nothing better to do, figured he’d see what kind of people were turned away, before he took his chances.

  Nobody was turned away. Nobody. Even a couple of beat cops got let in, and they didn’t even bother to push the button, just banged on the door with a nightstick.

  But, Billy noticed, the cops were kept waiting long enough to give the paying customers time to flush their stash down the toilet, drop a blade on the floor where it could be anybody’s…

  “You do it,” said Billy. It was cold, and he didn’t want to take his hands out of his pockets.

  Garret tweaked the brass button with his thumb and index finger, like it was a nipple. Here he was doing Billy’s chores again.

  “Quit fuckin’ around, will you?”

  Garret got a grip on his temper, pushed the button. The buzzer rasped. Billy shoved the door open with the pointed, metal-capped toe of his cowboy boot, swaggered inside.

  The pool hall was a favourite hangout of the Red Eagles, a Chinese youth gang. There were eight full-size tables in two rows down the length of the room. To the left of the door there was a wooden counter with a glass top, the cash register. Beyond the counter stood a rack for cues, a Coke machine and several video machines. The owner was a short, fat Chinese guy named Mike, who was maybe fifty years old and never looked at you but always seemed to know exactly where you were. Mike carried a sawed-off pool cue tucked in the back pocket of his baggy pants, and he was the only Chinese Billy had ever met who always needed a shave.

  Mike ignored Garret, nodded to Billy. “How’s it hangin’, white boy?”

  “Ask your girlfriend,” said Billy, grinning, as he sauntered past Mike, through the blue haze of smoke and soft murmur of conversation and brittle clatter of the balls, towards an empty table at the far end of the room.

  “Eight ball,” said Garret. There were about a dozen Chinese kids and their girls playing pool or the video games, or just standing around looking tough. Garret was careful not to catch anybody’s eye.

  Mike reached under the counter and came up with a plastic tray containing the balls. There was a rumour Mike also kept a double-barrelled twelve-gauge under the counter. Garret believed the rumour was based on fact. There was something about Mike, a kind of vacant look in his eye. As if he didn’t give a shit about anything and was just waiting for a chance to prove it.

  “Table number two.”

  There were three vacant tables in the pool hall. Number two was up front. Billy was chalking up a cue at the table closest to the toilets, way at the back.

  “How about six?” Garret pointed at Billy. “He’s got a problem with his bladder, might have to make a run for it.”

  “Special favour,” said Mike.

  “Just don’t give us no special rate.”

  Mike flicked a switch, and a double row of frosted neon tubing over the table snapped on, making the green felt come alive.

  Garret wandered over to the rack of cues, gleaming lengths of polished maple. It cost ten dollars a month, but Billy kept his own personal cue on the premises, in the common rack but under lock and key. Garret didn’t have that much interest in the game; he’d rather spend the money on his Mustang. He chose a sixteen-ounce cue, rolled it across an empty table to make sure it was reasonably straight, then dug around in the pocket of his Levis until he found three quarters, which he dropped in the Coke machine.

  “You shoulda took a bent one,” said Billy, pointing at Garret’s cue as he approached the table. “With your eye, it’d help you shoot straighter.”

  “Fuck you,” said Garret.

  Billy grabbed Garret’s Coke, drank deeply, wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “Rack ’em.”

  Garret dumped the balls on the table, gathered them close together with his arms and then arranged them in a wooden triangle. He lifted the triangle carefully, to avoid disturbing the set of the balls, and dropped the rack under the table.

  Billy flipped a dime. The coin flashed under the lights. “Call it.”

  “Heads.”

  The dime hit the green felt, bounced once and rolled into the middle of the table and fell over on its side.

  Billy bent to peer at the coin. “Your lucky day, Garret.”

  Garret picked up the off-white cue ball and walked down to the far end of the table, positioned the ball and crouched over his cue.

  Billy finished chalking up. He drank some more of Garret’s Coke.

  A video game went bonk boing bonk.

  Garret’s shoulder dipped as he made his shot. The cue ball shot down the length of the table and hit the racked balls with a sound like a small bone breaking. The balls scattered across the table, bounced off the rubber. The six ball dropped into a corner pocket.

  Billy lit a cigarette.

  Garret tried a bank into the near side pocket, missed by an inch.

  Billy blew smoke out of his nostrils and lined up his shot.

  One of the Chinese kids sauntered over, a gang member who called himself Pony. He leaned against the table. Pony wore his hair short; it was about an inch long except for a long tail at the back which he kept gathered together with a red rubber band. Billy figured that was why they called him Pony, because of the ponytail. Billy blew twin streams of smoke out of his nostrils and nodded at him. The kid nodded back. Double cool. Smoke rolled across the table like a little fogbank. Billy made a difficult shot into the far corner pocket, and tried to look as if he did it every day of his life.

  “Nice shot,” said Pony. “How you doin’, man?”
r />   Billy shrugged. “Gettin’ by.”

  “Got a car?”

  “I got a car,” said Billy, “but I don’t got a sign on the roof that says taxi.”

  Pony smiled. He had nice teeth. He said, “Maybe you wanna buy a radio.”

  Billy sank the thirteen in the far side pocket. Ash from his cigarette fell on the table. He glanced up the room at Mike, but Mike was busy making change. Garret drained his Coke and crushed the can. Pony grinned at him. Billy wiped the ash into the felt with the palm of his hand, leaving a pale gray smear. He chalked his cue and lined up his next shot.

  “It’s a Pioneer,” said Pony. “High-power. Forty watts. Hundred bucks, and for an extra twenty I can throw in a nice pair of Alpine speakers, still in the box.”

  “I didn’t come here for a radio,” said Billy. “I already got one, unless somebody just stole it.”

  “Then what are you doing here?”

  “Playing pool,” said Billy, “or didn’t you notice?” But he and Pony were playing another little game, a kind of verbal tag. Billy was there to buy himself a piece. Pony was there to sell it to him. The question was, who was going to make the first move?

  “Your shot,” said Garret.

  Billy, feeling reckless and lucky, called a double bank into the side pocket and missed by six inches.

  Pony wandered over to another table. He put his arm around a girl Billy figured was maybe fifteen years old and weighed eighty pounds — ninety if you counted her eye shadow and lipstick.

  The video game went bonk bonk bonk.

  Garret kissed the four ball off the eight into the end pocket and made a similar noise.

  “You call that?” said Billy.

  “Yeah, sure,” said Garret, grinning. “Four ball off the eight and into the end pocket.”

  “Fuckin’ fluke.”

  “You’d take it — why shouldn’t I?”

  “Anybody ever tell you that you were a first class asshole, Garret?”

  “Anybody ever tell you, Billy, that you weren't a first class asshole?”

  Sniggering over his little joke, Garret lost his concentration and missed an easy shot. Billy truly believed that was the root of all Garret’s problems — that he had a sense of humour. He lit another cigarette, ran his fingers through his hair. Pony was staring at him from across the room, and so was his little chipmunk of a girlfriend, her cheeks puffy with bubble-gum. Or maybe it was a cud she was chewing on, and that explained the vague, faraway look in her big brown eyes. Billy said something to Garret, giving himself a chance to look away. He turned back to Pony and the dude was still staring at him. Billy had a moment of uneasiness, but there was no belligerence in Pony’s eyes. It was as if he was trying to see deep inside Billy, figure him out.