Private Eye 4 - Nobody Dies in Chinatown

by Max Lockhart

  He shivered and rubbed his arms. He had placed his coat over the Chinese's face and chest, and now he was cold. But not as cold as the corpse, he thought, observing the pool of blood that had coagulated under the coat. Nothing would warm him again.

  He glanced back at the window, at the wet streets and neon signs, the pagodas and bars. There were no people, as there should be at night. The word had seeped into the streets and alleys, bars and teahouses, brothels and shops. A man was murdered in Chinatown; the white police would be coming. Stay in, stay silent, stay blind. The tong has spoken. When night descends again, we will come, we will question, we will know. That is the order of things.

  Cleary ground out his cigarette, crouched down, and examined the dead man closely. He was just a laborer, not worth much in this society, or most others for that matter. A thousand more would take his place tomorrow, and he would end up in the morgue with a cardboard tag tied to his toe while the pathologist cut him up. His luck had been bad in more ways than one tonight. He lost his winnings and lost his life, but more than that, he would go to his grave mutilated, a sure way for a Chinese to miss out on any kind of hereafter.

  Cleary looked more closely at the man. His closed eyes and forehead, above the coat that covered his face and chest, looked peaceful. The forehead was high and slightly domed, the features were delicate and intelligent, rather than coarse and flat. He looked more mandarin than laborer. Cleary respectfully removed his handcuffs from the dead man's wrist, noticing as he did that the Chinese's hand was long and slender, like a pianist's. Turning over the hand, he checked out the palm. There were calluses, but new ones. Whoever the man was, other than a bail jumper, he had come down from his place in the world. Cleary wondered how that had happened. Chinese society was rigid. A man born to an intellectual life seldom lost his place.

  Standing up, he put the cuffs back into his pocket. Joe Quinlan and now this Chinese. Both of them more than they seemed to be, and both of them dead. No connection between the two except a tired, sickened private eye named Jack Cleary.

  He heard the street-level door open and two men, talking and joking, climbing the stairs. He recognized the voices, and felt even sicker. Of all the plainclothes detectives on the LAPD, why did it have to be Sfakis and Hine? He had taken about all he could stand today. He wasn't sure he could take those two assholes.

  They entered the room together, each holding fortune cookies, and each chewing on toothpicks, like a couple of macabre Bobbsey Twins. Except they didn't look like twins at all. Hine was well oiled, with short curly hair turning gray, and handsome looks dissipated by overindulgences. Sfakis had a Detroit flat-top, so short the scalp showed through, and no neck. His head sat directly on his shoulders like Humpty-Dumpty. Cleary always wondered why Sfakis bothered to buy ties. He might as well paint a knot on his chin and stripes down his shirtfront and let it go at that.

  The two detectives glanced at Cleary, but not at the Chinese. He was just a clod of mud not worth noticing until it was time to sweep it up. Sfakis pointed a thick finger at one particular fortune cookie in Hine's big hand. "I gotta feeling about this one."

  Hine looked at Cleary. "Every day we eat Chinese, and every freakin' day I got to read him his fortune." He snapped open the cookie and pulled out the strip of paper. '"You will find fame and fortune in Chinatown.' Feel better now?"

  Sfakis put his arm around his partner's shoulders and smiled. It was enough to make Cleary sicker than he already was. "Much." He looked at Cleary. "Kinda like you, huh, Cleary? You got pretty famous down here, didn't ya? They still talk about you in the teahouses. Anybody would think you were just another Chink."

  Cleary shot him a look.

  "Oh, our man's a little pissed," said Sfakis, nudging Hine. "He don't like to be called a Chink. He just likes to sleep with them."

  Cleary shot over, wrapped Sfakis's tie around his fist, and jerked until the detective's face was almost touching his. "You're down here to investigate a murder, not rag my ass."

  Hine grabbed Cleary from behind and pulled him off. "Pull that again, Cleary, and you can go downtown and spend the night in a cell full of hoods, and I'll make sure I tell them you used to be a cop."

  Cleary jerked out of Hine's grip, not too difficult considering how drunk the detective was. "You keep him off my back."

  Sfakis straightened his tie, his eyes hard and cold.

  "I'll remember this, Cleary. You try anything funny again, and I'll charge you with assaulting a police officer."

  The sick, cold feeling in Cleary's belly increased. It always did when he had done something stupid, and even touching Sfakis was stupid. All he had done had been to give the scum some leverage. "You gonna check out the scene or not?"

  Hine bent down and pulled back Cleary's coat. He looked at the body as if it were road kill, and not very desirable road kill at that. "That's one seriously dead Chinaman. You happy now, Cleary?"

  Cleary tightened his jaw. "Hardly worth interrupting your supper, huh, Hine? Although I guess it didn't spoil your appetite," he added, watching Sfakis chomping on fortune cookies like an inferior breed of bull.

  Hine dropped the coat, making sure it landed in the sticky pool of blood. "Go to hell, Cleary."

  Sfakis swallowed his cookie. "Hey, this isn't even our call, Cleary. We were gang-banging spareribs down the street when we heard the squeal. You better cool it down."

  Cleary started to answer, but heard more footsteps coming up the stairs. These were heavy footfalls of tired, reluctant men who grunted all the way up to the room.

  "Here comes Itch and Scratch," said Hine, going over to lean against the window frame and pick his teeth.

  Cleary nearly groaned. Sfakis and Hine were bad enough, but at least they knew which way was up in Chinatown. Itch and Scratch, or Owens and Natell, were barely able to zip their sagging pants in the morning. He looked toward the door as two cops in uniform tromped into the room, big-beliied lifers, patrol cops, pulling up those same sagging pants and adjusting their guns. They had been playing good-cop, bad-cop for so long on the streets that they had adopted those faces as their own. Owens was the smiling, good-natured guy, and Natell the sourpuss with a face that would curdle milk. They were both equally dumb.

  "That must be the first time either of you two flat-foots had to climb a stair in Chinatown," said Hine.

  "Came as soon as we could, Detective," said Owens, his cheerful, good-natured face tightening up with sour lines.

  Natell looked around the empty room. "They said this was supposed to be a gambling den. This don't look like no gambling den to me."

  Cleary exchanged a look with Sfakis and Hine. He had more in common with the two detectives than he did with the two flatfoots who didn't have a clue as to what was going on in Chinatown. "You expected roulette wheels and opium pipes, Natell?"

  "It's only been their beat since the freakin' war," said Hine. "They still need a city map to find the place."

  Owens held on to his good humor and ignored the crack. Besides, Cleary figured it was true. "Ya get a good look at the guy?"

  Cleary sighed. Evidently Owens and Natell were all the department was going to send. "There were two. Wearing some kind of Chinese clown masks."

  Sfakis waded in with his comments which, as usual, left a lot to be desired as far as Cleary was concerned. "That's it? Clown masks? That's all you got?"

  "I was too busy trying to keep from being blasted across the room to ask to see their driver's licenses, Sfakis. And they sure as hell didn't volunteer any information. You guys are the cops! It's your job to investigate. You got a dead man lying here, for Christ's sake!"

  "Knowing Cleary, I'm not surprised," said Natell under his breath, but just loud enough to be heard.

  That was it! Enough! More than enough, thought Cleary, tired and angry. Grabbing Natell, he slammed him against the wall. "You talking to me, Natell?"

  "You got a curse, private eye? Anybody gets too tight with you, they get blown away. You already had one g
uy stiffed today. You trying to set a record?"

  Grief slammed him in the chest, leaving him panting. "You calling me a murderer?" demanded Cleary, wanting to sink his fist into Natell's beer belly.

  "No! But you sure attract them. If Jack Cleary's around, sooner or later there's gonna be a stiff. You're trouble. Always have been."

  "Shut up, Natell. If you boys in blue did your job instead of standing around cadging free beer off the bartenders, there wouldn't be any cesspools in this city, and no need for anybody to hire a private eye to clean them out."

  Owens grabbed Cleary's arm. "Hey, that's my partner you're talking to," he began.

  "No! I thought he rented that uniform from a costume shop."

  Natell pushed himself away from the wall, his sour face looking as if it had been drenched in vinegar and hung out to dry. "You're pushing, Cleary. You always did, even when you were a cop. 'Gotta make a difference,' was your motto. You never could see that some things never change. Like Chinatown. We make about as much difference as a flea on a dog's ass."

  "Natell, Owens!"

  Cleary looked up to see Charlie Fontana enter the room followed by two SID men, two uniformed cops who appeared to have enough sense to hit the urinal in the men's room, and a couple of grunts from Central Receiving.

  "Why don't you two boys make yourself useful and dust the stairwell or something," continued Fontana, rubbing his hands over his tired, lined face. This was Fontana's second homicide of the day, too, remembered Cleary.

  Owens and Natell traded disgruntled looks, then headed out the door with the same slow, heavy steps with which they entered. The SID men went to work with fingerprint powder, cameras, tape measures, and all the other paraphernalia of crime detection. The scene would be printed, photographed, measured, swept, scraped, classified, and filed in a manilla folder after being reduced to typed reports. It was all very scientific, very efficient, very cold; a human tragedy reduced to statistics to be used in the next city budget meeting. Cleary hated it, hated the impersonality of an investigation. By the time the case got to court, if it even did, nothing was human anymore. Not even the corpse.

  Fontana strolled over to Cleary, and turned around to study the room. "I came over soon as I heard, Jack." he said in a low voice. "It's been a hell of a day for you. Why did you have to come to Chinatown tonight? Couldn't you have at least waited until Quinlan was buried, give yourself some rest time? You need more business in Chinatown like L.A. needs more smog."

  "I had a job to do," Cleary said, watching the grunts as they lifted the body onto the meatwagon cart. "Besides, I had to slay a dragon."

  Fontana looked at him for a long moment. "Looks like it's going to slay you. Do me a favor and get out of Chinatown. You can't turn back the clock. Like Natell said, you came down here to push. Well, give it up, Jack. You can't change anything in Chinatown. You can't change the tong. The dragon will swallow you up."

  Cleary looked at Fontana, his eyes burning and his mind raw with the horror of the day. "I didn't know you were poetical, Charlie."

  Fontana's face went cold and still as he became a cop talking to a civilian. "Keep your nose clean while you're down here, Jack. I don't want any trouble, and I don't want to get a call to pick up a stiff in some back alley and find out it's you."

  "You won't, I promise."

  Fontana looked at him as though he didn't believe him, then walked over to the body. He gently lifted Cleary's coat off the body and looked at the dead man. Cleary saw the weary resignation in his eyes, the kind that comes with the experience of years of homicides. Fontana had seen too many corpses killed in too many places and in too many different ways to be anything but resigned. A cop couldn't get indignant over every murder. They handled too many. Private eyes, on the other hand, could afford to get involved and be indignant.

  Fontana nodded to the two men, and they wheeled the body out, leaving only a chalked outline and a large puddle of blood behind. He handed Cleary his coat. "Give me a minute and get SID started, then we'll take it over to Frank Tang's."

  "Hey, what do you say, Cleary? It'll be just like old times," said Hine.

  Cleary stood looking at the chalk outline of the laborer with the pianist's hands and the intellectual face. He didn't want that man's murderer to walk. He didn't want the case shoved into Pending because it was just another Chinese. "Not if I can help it," he said, ignoring Fontana's suddenly worried look.

  FOURTEEN

  Some things certainly never changed in Chinatown, thought Cleary, and Frank Tang's Restaurant and Bar was one of those things. A curtain of red glass beads still separated the bar from the restaurant area, and a waiter glided through it with a tray of hors d'oeuvres and a lingering exotic tinkle. Only in Chinatown could cheap glass beads sound exotic. Anywhere else in the city, they would be thrown in the trash.

  He swirled the liquor around in his glass and listened to the other noises that weren't so exotic: the muffled hum of conversation and occasional boisterous laughter from his companions, mixed with the satiny strains of "Good Night My Love," playing on the wood veneer Magnavox behind the bar. It was Frank Tang's; it was home.

  He turned around and watched the Chinese waiters placing the stools upside down on the tables, but quietly, so as not to disturb the quiet ambience of the room. Other waiters, their Oriental faces placid masks, stood around, wanting to go home, but attentive to the needs of the cops. This was the foreign devils' hangout when they came to Chinatown, and it would not do to antagonize them. It would disturb the order of things.

  He twisted around on a bar stool and observed his company for the night. Hine and Sfakis, as well as Fontana, had made themselves comfortable around the bar, spreading out as if they owned the place. He wasn't surprised at Hine and Sfakis. They were barbarians anyway, treating Frank and his help like Chinese coolies, but he was disappointed in Charlie Fontana. His old partner was listening to Hine and Sfakis's line of biased malarkey as if it were engraved on tablets and handed down from on high.

  Frank Tang stood behind the bar smoothly distributing drinks all around. Hine and Sfakis continued talking as if Tang and the other Chinese didn't exist. They were both real sensitive.

  "I just hope to hell we're not headed for another tong war down here. These people kill like machines. Life just don't mean nothing to them," said Hine, grabbing an egg roll off the hors d'oeuvre tray.

  Sfakis shrugged his shoulders. Cleary noticed his head shrugged, too. That was what happened when you didn't have a neck. "That's fine by me." He grinned. "Long as they keep it in the 'Famiry.'"

  Cleary shot Sfakis a look. The cop stared back puzzled. That figured, thought Cleary. Sfakis was so stupid he couldn't even recognize when someone looked at him like they would look at something stuck to the bottom of their shoe.

  Frank Tang sat a fresh drink in front of Cleary. "Bourbon and soda—with a twist." He was second or third generation Chinese, Cleary didn't remember which, but his voice still had a slight accent.

  With a flourish, Tang rubbed the sliver of lemon peel around the rim, and Cleary was caught off-guard by the little ritual. It brought back a lot of memories, some he didn't want to remember. Tang gave him a little smile, and he nodded back in appreciation. His eyes stung from fatigue, and maybe a tear. After all this time, Frank Tang remembered.

  He watched the bar owner move off as Fontana touched his shoulder. "What the hell were you doing up there anyway, Jack? What kind of job did you take that left you standing guard over a dead Chinaman?"

  Cleary rubbed the back of his neck where a painful stiffness was demanding attention. "The guy had jumped bail on some penny-ante grocery theft. I was hired to bring him in, save the bondsman his two hundred bucks," he finished bitterly.

  "I wondered what your excuse for coming back was, Jack," said Fontana, his face sober. "I remember that case. It's not worth the court costs. If you hadn't taken the job, the bail bondsman would have written off his loss next week, and forgotten it by the week after that." />
  "The poor Chinese got written off instead," said Cleary, feeling his features tighten.

  "I don't know why you're giving yourself such a rash about one lousy Chinaman, Cleary," said Hine, licking sauce off his fingers.

  "The man's dead, Hine. Somebody shot him. Doesn't that mean anything to you?"

  Sfakis leaned around his partner to look down the bar at Cleary. "You ain't been down here in a while, Cleary. Maybe you forgot. Nobody dies in Chinatown."

  "That's right, Cleary," chimed in Hine. "Some other Chink just off the boat will have his identity by tomorrow morning. The tong just puts the guy's apron on someone else, and bingo, a miracle."

  Sfakis grinned. "Kinda like the resurrection." He reached for another egg roll, dipped it in mustard sauce, and popped it into his mouth, followed by a large swallow of water. Chinese mustard was hot as hell, and Cleary wished he could force-feed the whole bowl to the fat slob.

  Cleary put down his drink. "And all you two are going to do is sit right here drinking booze on the cuff."

  Hine snickered, weaving slightly on the bar stool, his eyes red veined and glazed. "That's right, man. Just as long as Frankie Tang will serve it. And that better be as long as I want it," he added, an ugly note in his voice. "Hey, Tang," he called, his words slurring. "Give us another round. We're defending law and order in Chinatown, and it's thirsty work."

  Tang had anticipated the demand, and was already heading their way with another tray of drinks. Cleary saw the bourbon and soda with the sliver of lemon peel, and suddenly swallowed back bile. His drink on the same tray as the drinks for Hine and Sfakis, like he was one of them. He swallowed again and rose, reaching into his pocket and extracting a few bills.

  "Where are you going, Jack?" asked Fontana, his eyes sunken with fatigue and disillusionment. The hope was buried deep tonight, almost too deep to see.